I really do love it when an album’s artwork so perfectly sits alongside the sounds within. It lets you know that everyone involved is aware of the aims of the work and care that they get the whole thing right. From the outset of Damiak’s Micalavera album, light sketch work of drizzling rain and sprouting fauna are both visual and aural metaphors which intertwine tightly with each other. There is a consistent sense of delicateness and melancholy but with an ultimately life-affirming heart.
‘Tenuous Gears’ is the first great highlight, following on from the mood setting opening tracks. It’s sounds seem mostly generated from acoustic sources – piano, drums, glockenspiel, guitar – but are stitched together with a knowing reliance on the tools of the digital age. Repetitive motifs entrance here and elsewhere, most successfully on tracks such as ‘Tepid Coat’, ‘Frificun’ and ‘Este Es Mi Secreto’. A real favourite is ‘Mira Arriba’ (Spanish for ‘look up’ – a subtle pointer to the previously mentioned uplifting centre to this music), which sounds like something a latter day Tom Waits might enjoy crooning over, but which does enough on its own to hold rhythmic, aural and melodic attention.
There are hints of European folk music littered throughout, both in timbre and structure. The texture this creates in contrast to the electronic processing and programming lifts both the organic and non-organic well above established clichés and formulae. Throughout, it relies on building solid sonic terrains through the layering of small, intimate sounds. This is music that draws the listener in, gently demanding that it be examined in close detail.
Adrian Elmer
