Dialogs by Fred Lonberg-Holm

Well, you can forget about the cello, my friends. Clutched in the hands and wrapped in the thighs of Fred Lonberg-Holm, this shapely, stringed resonating box is attacked by the crudest of implements, made to literally eat in on itself, and is ground down into its most elemental particles - a homeopathic cello. The sound contained herein is simply the resultant dust, that floats like a fine mist, smothers like a coarse blanket, and gets caught up in a ferocious wind, that tears away at your skin. This is the kind of deconstruction that is best experienced from a distance and through safety goggles. If music is sex on a beach, Fred is the dirty sand, defying any smooth, easy, one-note lubrication, and turning a basic instinct into a complex of irritation. While always honest and naked, there is nothing pure about it, nothing singular or precious, with every utterance a dense multiplicity, every action a provocation, and every episode an exploding kaleidoscope.
This is a solo recording, yet I hear an entire ensemble. The Ensemble of Fred, stacked thick with a relentless depth that only pauses to reload and strike again. An ensemble whose empathy and interactions are as quick and precarious as our life force. Putting this particular ensemble together took a great deal of time, effort and care, because once you are in this richly populated band, there's no way out. And while there is nothing adorable here, there is much to adore in the sheer depth and breadth this artist brings to each moment. Nothing is wasted and everything is laid to waste. The act of creation and the act of destruction coexist, and a new way is found.
If you still really believe that less is more, then practice what you preach and shut up and go away - at least from this recording. The cello will never be the same, and neither will I.
~Michael Zerang, Chicago, 2002

Fred Lonberg-Holm is an improviser/composer living in the Hudson Valley of NY.