This is the last concert by the Space Quartet, recorded highlighting the beautiful acoustics of AMAC auditorium in Barreiro.

====================================================
Sometimes during those liminal moments between awake and asleep I dream about floating through trees and imagine how birds dream. Space Quartet always starts off like a conversation with an old friend, in a room that feels familiar and weathered by a thousand notes, stories, lives, freeing of the wings. This is how it feels to come back, knowing it might be the last time, but never applying a name: a cluster of saxophone notes, a call back by bass, then percussion, and the beating heart of electronics set to recall mode.

This record is called "Last Set", and it might very well be the most varied thing this unit has ever released: recorded in Barreiro in June 2021, the music ebbs and flows through oceans and tributaries, making the solo instrument parts feel the loudest at times and the controlled chaos of all four players feel something akin to ambient jazz made by a cloud of cicadas communing on a lunar surface. The acoustics of the room feel palpable, and the immediacy of the recording reaches out to your heart first and your brain second. This is a longform statement that is both a hello and a goodbye. The group doesn’t waste any time getting going, around 7 minutes in one can already feel liftoff into space happening, but the landings when they come are gentle. There’s a rough patina of beauty to the way the electronics contrast with the ricochet of percussion and calm strength of the horn and bass, pouring fractals of light deep into orbit. This group is confident enough to go anywhere they want and they play with generosity towards each other and the audience. An hour goes by in the blink of an eye and not a moment is wasted. There is a concise-ness to it all that lets you know these players have not taken anything for granted. The last ten minutes are both mournful and joyful. All throughout, at different moments I am reminded of: beaches and canyons-era black dice, albert ayler, ellen fullman, mal waldron, all playing together in a endless dance. I know very little about music theory, and all I need to know is this: for me, there’s a printed postcard in a room, and every time you look at it the picture changes. You hear a group entering a zone and it is either working for you or it isn’t, and to try to intellectualize it anything beyond that is to want to play in the woods without getting your clothes dirty. Forget about it. There’s an organic synthesis happening that reminds me that the most compelling compositions can often feel improvised and the most compelling improvisations can often feel composed.

"Last Set" is my favorite thing I’ve heard from this group, and I have followed them from the beginning. It reminds me of the flight of imagination I had when first discovering improvised music in my early 20s, the revelation that just making a sound is joyful enough and you were put here to create. Records are postcards and the good ones come in envelopes covered in dirt, bury it in the garden of your brain and wait for the flowers to grow. This one is covered in blood and moondust. I am thankful for the space quartet, all the nervous energy, the calm waters, the circuitry squealing feedback, the sleepless nights, the endless textures and geography of friendship and the mystery of noise. All of it.

Peter Fosco, Kentucky USA, April 2023