Letters Across a Closed Border: äbädä’s Entre Deux Rivages
Seven pieces for voice, electronics and low brass, composed in correspondence. 38:44.
Before äbädä was two people in one room, it was two people who could not get to the same room. Entre Deux Rivages, between two shores, is the duo’s first record, and it was written across a closed border in 2020. Separated by countries and composing in correspondence, Eda Er (electronics, synth, voice) and Simon Sieger (trombone, valve trombone, tuba) sent each track out as a letter and got it back shaped by the other’s voice. The record is the sound of that exchange: a phrase offered, a phrase answered, a distance you can hear being crossed.
The circumstances are written into the titles. “Mistral” came out of Marseille’s gusts and a city locked indoors. “Toi d’un autre rivage”, you from another shore, came out of the two shores of Istanbul. “Curfew Dance” came out of the night the curfews were announced in France, a dance for a room you were no longer allowed to leave. Around them, “When the rivers meet the seas” opens the record where fresh water turns to salt, “I’m so lost in blue” and “C’est le son que vous obtenez en caressant une orchidée” (the sound you get when you stroke an orchid) carry the tenderness, and “Meşk”, the Ottoman word for the lesson learned by playing alongside a master, closes it: a piece about how music is passed from one person to another, on a record made of exactly that.
Voice and low brass
The pairing is unusual and it is the whole point. Sieger’s trombone, valve trombone and tuba give the music a floor of breath and metal, slow-moving, physical, sometimes barely more than air through a tube. Er’s electronics and synth sit above and around it, and her voice moves between the two, now a line, now a texture. Because the parts were made apart, neither player ever plays over the other; the arrangements have the spaciousness of a conversation where both people are listening. Laçin Şahin’s mix, with Ece Gülensoy assisting, keeps that space intact.
What it started
Everything äbädä has done since follows from here. The later records were made in one room, mixed in quadraphonic with the two players turning slowly in opposite directions, and their concrete palette grew to include objects, breath and the body. But the founding idea of the duo is already complete on this debut: sound as correspondence, absence as dialogue. It remains the clearest statement of what the project is for, and it is the record to start with if you want to understand why two people who play such different instruments belong together.
Entre Deux Rivages by äbädä (Eda Er — electronics, synth, vocal; Simon Sieger — trombone, valve trombone, tuba). Seven pieces, 38:44. Mix and master: Laçin Şahin. Assistant engineer: Ece Gülensoy. Cover illustration: Eda Er. Released 1 January 2021.
Tracklist: 1. When the rivers meet the seas (5:32) · 2. Mistral (5:41) · 3. I’m so lost in blue (5:32) · 4. C’est le son que vous obtenez en caressant une orchidée (4:01) · 5. Toi d’un autre rivage (5:23) · 6. Curfew Dance (6:01) · 7. Meşk (6:34).
Also available at nyxphere.bandcamp.com.