| Maldoror | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | Erik Friedlander |
| Cover: | Maldoror (album).jpg |
| Released: | November 11, 2003 |
| Recorded: | April 25, 2002 Teldex Studios, Berlin |
| Genre: | Avant-garde, Jazz, Contemporary classical music |
| Length: | 40:23 |
| Label: | Brassland HWY-005 |
| Producer: | Michael Montes |
| Chronology: | Erik Friedlander |
| Prev Title: | Quake |
| Prev Year: | 2003 |
| Next Title: | Prowl |
| Next Year: | 2006 |
Maldoror is a solo album by cellist Erik Friedlander recorded in Berlin and released on the Brassland label featuring music inspired by the French poet Comte de Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror.[1] [2]
The Allmusic review by Thom Jurek awarded the album 4½ stars stating "For all its intensity, it is nearly shockingly accessible, even with its far-flung and dramatic sense of dynamics. This is an album created to be listened to as one work, the individual selections all contribute to a haunting, hunted whole, and don't really exist well outside their framework as such. Nonetheless, this is a brilliantly conceived and executed recording, alluringly musical, and decadently humorous in places. As Friedlander's latest chapter, it is also his finest".[3]
Pitchfork rated the album 8.3 out of 10 observing that "The formula is simple: put a piece of Ducasse's text in front of the cellist in the studio, along with a few notes, and let him compose music to match it on the spot. It panned out, more or less, not because Maldoror was conceived as a series of songs, but because Erik Friedlander can do things with a cello that should have a reasonable listener fearing for her life".[4]
Jazz Review's John Kelman wrote "Maldoror is, quite simply, an important recording of solo improvised pieces, regardless of the instrument; but all the more compelling because it shows a side to the cello that has not been seen before".[5]
All compositions by Erik Friedlander