Caterina Barbieri

so i'm pretty new to her work, i've only heard a track or two. and then at source, her collab with saxophone player bendik giske from early this year, which i've been playing non-stop. i've listened to it many times and it still overwhelms me. both barbieri and giske are so precise with their playing and also powerfully natural, like two environments singing together.

she obviously has a longer discography at this point. i'm not sure i could describe what it is she does. there's minimalism but there's dance and pop too. almost a folk minimalism. the sound of it all is immaculate but there's also a looseness. i need to go back and listen. not even to mention bendik giske, whose playing on at source is just as amazing and whose work i'm not familiar with at all. anyway, caterina barbieri is doing something special.

here's "intuition, nimbus" the first track from at source. if that piques your interest the rest of the album follows a satisfying trajectory, something resembling rising conflict, catharsis and resolution even though the playing feels so out-of-world and out-of-time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc0wL6RX-pU

Cool. I got bit excited about the Barbieri/Giske record after you (I think?) brought it to my attention as a 2026 highlight, so thanks for that. I think I've listened to most of the Barbieri records but this collaboration feels a bit meatier to my ears. (I always like her shimmery arpeggiated textures etc in small doses but sometimes fear that her compositions don't always progress enough across their length, at least for my restless brain.)

I'd lost track of Giske post-2021. I remember digging a couple of his records that year, not least this collaboration: https://pavelmilyakovbendikgiske.bandcamp.com/album/untitled

great run of records

think 'ecstatic computation' is my personal fav

i keep coming back to the giske collaboration. it's honestly nothing groundbreaking. i just feel this sense of depth and space in it i don't often feel. it's also very frank somehow. "impatience, magma" is staggeringly sad and kind of observing the feeling of being sad at the same time, the beauty of it.

I'm still looking forward to the Barker/Giske record (which hasn't come out, right?).

Ok I finally got around to listening to this and it's sick.

one of my fav albums of the year