An unexpected and brilliant return from the veteran Hungarian avant garde artist, ARBO X is a newly realised composition of work originally recorded for a film he directed back in 2006. I really only know Szemzo through the early Group 180 collab with Reich and the peerless Snapshot from the Island that followed in '87, so i wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this not knowing much of his work from the past 30 years. Whatever he's been up to, it's certainly time well spent. Essentially a series of shortform sketches which suggest their cinematic origins, ARBO X strikes a balance between fourth world layering, minimal composition, vocal incantations and spacious jazz-indebted ethereality, and with it ends up sounding both incredibly contemporary and supremely masterful. The range of ARBO X in part reminded me of the Caterina Barbieri record Fantas Variations, on which she collaborated with a number of other likeminded artists, opening up different contexts for her own music, exploring different instruments and compositional approaches. What's most remarkable about this record, then, i suppose, is that here Szemzo reaches all manner of ideas and spaces alone. Some vision.
