Apesar de ter nascido em 1960 e de ter um passado considerável na música (fez parte de várias bandas de jazz), Are Spirits What I Hear? é o disco de estreia do músico avant-garde Agustí Martinez, catalão de nascença. A editora Etude, de Barcelona, não exitou sequer em lançer mais um OVNI para o panorama musical espanhol. Are Spirits What I Hear? é um conjunto de composições para o saxofone alto sem mais convidados, sem mais instrumentos, sem sequer a utilização de overdubs. São dez paisagens monocromáticas mas provocadoras de sensações distintas. O saxofone é o maior e único personagem num disco onde Agustí Martínez aproveita para explorar diferentes técnicas e abordagens ao instrumento. O catalão explora também abordagens emocionais distintas: do calmo ao explosivo, do sereno ao tenso, do belo ao feio pode ser apenas um segundo. Há de facto ruídos que não associaríamos ao saxofone utilizado de forma habitual (o tema “Are Spirits What I Hear?” é exemplo disso), mas tudo parece surgir da relação com o saxofone, da sua livre exploração. É ele o centro das atenções. É ele que guia este disco pela escuridão e, em ultima instância, pela solidão.-André Gomes (BODYSPACE)

I really don’t know what Agusti Martinez hears, but for me, spirits are not exactly my first association with this album. Except maybe, if they come in the context of being “in good spirits” or something of the like, which, considering the opaque and apparitional character of the black and white booklet, does however not seem to be the issue here. And still, dispite its somewhat bleak aesthetics, this is a warm collection of multicoloured solo compositions for Alto Saxophone. On my mind’s eye, the summer’s what I see.It is obvious that some people will have initial reservations about the concept of this disc. Admittedly, listening to one man play his instrument for 50 minutes may at first seem like a pretty hard job. But then again, Martinez plays it like noone else. Using the entire body of his Sax, he produces hissings, heavy breathings, stortorous noises, airy warblers, beatings and knockings, energetic one-tone meditations, abrupt fountains of tones and rapid melodic lines, walls of sound and open spaces and even throws in the occasional shout. As he points out himself, “Do I hear...” is not interested in virtuoso fingerpickings, but cares more for creating polyphonics made up of concrete and indeterminate elements – and truly, in the spacey and stretched-out middle section of the work, the original (or rather: well-known) timbral qualities of the Saxophone get lost in wave upon wave of fragmented clicks and rhythmic emissions of air. It is almost as if the Catalan composer has his mind set on deconstructing his instrument into microscopic parts, using each building block as a new source of aural material. But right before everything falls apart, he picks up on the intense opening and delivers some of the most sharp-edged and precipitiously majestic horn blows, dividing the sea like a giant oceanliner on a cloudless sky. The first release by Etude Records, Mike Hansen’s “At Every Point” was well-constructed and intruigingly asbtract, but with this fire-breathing set of pure electricity they distinguish themselves as one of the new labels to watch.Martinez prefers the heat and the sweat above sugar-coated sweetness, but at the very end, he dives into a dreamy lullaby, a yearning and longing lyrical fantasy of a mere fifty second, which brings the album to a sensous close. I could listen to this man play forever.-Tobias Fisher (TOKAFI)

Agusti Martinez is a Spanish improviser specializing in solo saxophone improvisations such as the ones collected on Are Spirits What I Hear (Etude, 2007). The album's broad repertory of techniques shows the distance that has been traveled between Anthony Braxton's original intuitions and the post-noise generation of the 2000s. -Piero Scaruffi (SCARUFFI.COM)

Agustí Martinez is a saxophone player from Barcelona who grew up in several chamber orchestras and jazz bands, then began to perform solo in the mid-nineties. This is his first release, a very good one. The initial "Serie B (for Scelsi)" is a one-note theme alternated with lyricism spotted by irony and desperation, a firm statement of intents under any circumstance. "For Pau" nears certain areas of John Butcher's work, but instantly runs away from the dangers of classification, becoming infectiously multicoloured and rhythmically unpredictable; Martinez is a player that loves silences and pauses, which deepen the meaning of every note he plays. Even the occurrence of (by now commonly used) lingual-and-salival spurts is more welcomed than accepted. In "Meeting", voice is added to augment and expand the palette; sharp outbursts and membrane-carving harmonics precede a whistling anti-song whose body is boned by additional glottolalia. Indeed, Martinez's personal approach makes him different from most saxophonists, essentially due to a more pronounced rhythmic presence (check "Cross-Light" for reference). "Moc and Caniche (to Paula)" is the most rage-and-enthusiasm act, where smoothness and elegance are thrown into a pot of dense articulation and sulphuric straightforwardness; the result is probably the best in terms of compositional interest. "Che Collons!" - a title that makes me suspect that Martinez knows Italian idiomatic expressions quite well - is a long improvisation whose balance of collateral significance, serene melodicism and disturbed spontaneousness is probably the best summary of everything that Agustí is able to conjure up from his right mind. Instead, "Tic" allows him to mix bubbles and rainbows in a metamorphosis of technical prowess, as effervescent scalar runs collapse all at once, delivering the instruments from jazz impediments. The title track is based on the tube-ish sound of the air, things we heard in a thousand records of the genre, but executed with precision and musicality by the Catalan. Overall, this album is permeated by an evident mastery of spacing and timing that renders the listening an extremely pleasing experience any time. -Touching Extremes.

Trabajo que ejemplifica el íntimo y acerado diálogo entre músico e instrumento que promulga Etude Records. Como ya hiciera Anthony Braxton en For alto y luego John Zorn en Locus solus, Agustí Martínez se enfrenta a todas la posibilidades expresivas del saxo alto desde un planteamiento, como él mismo reconoce, que está orientado hacia la “emisión del sonido” antes que al virtuosismo. Elude así Martínez toda impostación o intención artificiosa al penetrar en la “experiencia personal que producen en la boca todos esos fenómenos sonoros”. Usando las más diversas técnicas (slap, multifónicos, respiración circular), creando figuras imposibles que recurren a los ataques, a los pianísimos y a los sobreagudos, el músico indaga en la naturaleza poliédrica del sonido a través de una herramienta contemporánea que es deudora tanto del jazz más elusivo de Roscoe Mitchell o el cuarteto Rava como del ascetismo de Scelsi (la multiplicidad de una nota) o la fisicidad espectral de Sciarrino (la desfiguración en el roce armónico). ¿Parecen espíritus lo que escuchamos si el sonido sale desde nuestro interior? -Jesús Gonzalo (revistamu.com)