From out of the dark, sparks of feedback birdsong signal a return to the singular sonic environments of Rafael Toral’s sound-world
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NEWS - From out of the dark, sparks of feedback birdsong signal a return to the singular sonic environments of Rafael Toral’s sound-world
Three decades ago, in the early years of his practice, Toral used the guitar as a generator, to create discreet texture and droning tones. Later, he abandoned the guitar entirely, focusing on self-made electronics to render his music, and the silence from which it came, with a post-free jazz perspective. For the music of Spectral Evolution and Traveling Light, Toral has combined his methodologies, radically expanding the space within their harmonies with his self-made machines, while engaging directly with his instrument and the chords of the material. Further time-loops emerge throughout the duration of Traveling Light. The simple, organic quality of these reshaped songs and sounds, arranged by Toralfor guitar with sine waves, feedback and bass guitar forms a proxy quartet of sorts! One of Toral’s self-made devices incorporates a theremin—another near-century old innovation in electronics conceived for use in classical music—to modulate feedback melodies here. Meanwhile, this altered space is visited by canonical jazz sounds on four tracks, as clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, flügelhorn player Yaw Tembe and flautist Clara Saleiro each guest on one song. In this new landscape, history and tradition are exemplified, like a toast to Earth cultures made on the alien terrain of Mars.
