Bleeps and plucky rhythms swirled around suggestive strings on Fernando Corona’s first pair of full-lengths. On this occasion, his hypnotic affairs are equal parts moody stupor and blissful reverie. Although downplayed, electronics still have a role, erecting silky, streamlined structures out of low-end gurgle and drainpipe hum.
These caverns, however, are positively flooded with dark, reverb-laden strings that swing like a thermometer in monsoon season. On pIeces such as Cosmos I and II, Corona inflates the sound field with overlapping strings and dense drones that inspire total vertigo while on others, referencing his work on Martes, he flirts with contrapuntal melodies that shoot up and tie themselves in love knots around the grating rhythmic backbone.
The work thereby tries to gorge on the tension between beautiful chaos and solipsistic ambience. Inasmuch as the lush strings interacting with shards of crusty black sonic shrapnel manage to move Corona away from his previous efforts, they also place him somewhere that is at this point rather confused and largely ineffective. These compositions are epic, but unnecessarily so, and are left to appear somewhat gaudy. Time reveals further detail, but at the same time it shows just how much wasn’t grasped – how much technique was sacrificed for a sinister atmosphere that ultimately is not enough to carry one through its near hour-length playing time.
Max Schaefer
