I found this album interesting at first. Repeated listens, however, have dragged me right under its spell. Right now I’m listening through for the fourth time today. It has seeped under my skin and is stuck there.
Album opener, ‘Monogenetic’, works as a kind of overture – it introduces a few key ideas as seemingly random static and bursts of hum start to form into mellow rhythmic patterns. It doesn’t give the overall aesthetic of the album away, but certainly puts you into the right mindset. From here, acoustic piano is the dominant recognisable instrument. The playing is quite harmonically traditional and simple with no grandiose technical workouts. Melodies are built on basic two or three chord progressions with plenty of space to breathe. And while the ear’s first reaction is to try and concentrate on the piano playing, it soon becomes apparent that the piano serves as the canvas on which the actual details can rest. Samples of vinyl noise, delayed digital glitches and scratchy rhythms establish themselves as the main features. It’s a slick inversion of the usual pattern of field recordings and rhythms being used as the texture underpinning the traditional playing. As the album progresses, the piano itself starts being sucked into the foreground – brief looped samples, often grabbed with the attack of the played note removed, heading into Steve Reich territory. ‘Piroclastic’ utilises this process to build incredible tension before new piano patterns interact and the loop releases into warm static. The album also contains a surprisingly robust, though never punchy, bottom end which adds incredible weight to the otherwise fragile sounds.
The group is a three piece from the Canary Islands of Spain, with links to Berlin, consisting of Luis Ortiz, Cristobal Montesdeoca and Raul Gonzalez and are augmented by the visual artist and filmmaker Amanda Lopez. Their stated aim for this release is to explore the interactions between harmony and noise, hence the album title. They have succeeded. It’s a simple premise from which grand work has been created.
Adrian Elmer
