Strange fare for heads feed on the language of electronic structure and its detritus. Rf (Ryan Francesconi), not unknown from such domains having studied electronic music at the Californian Institute of art, combined with guitar and composition. His website has a not uncanny resemblance to the Spongefork website, the electronic synthesis software program Francesconi created, yet this album bears little resemblance to the electronic field of which such endeavors pertain. That is of course if you read this sound text as not an exercise of structure but as an organic live event.
11 Continents concentrates on highly wrought guitar structures, woven around Lili De La Mora’ wispy voice invoking symbolic shards lingering through and between the crisp precision of Francesconi guitar. Fabiola Sanchez’ voice leads on the Kings track, elsewhere dancing with De La Mora, echoing, lengthening and extending vocal possibilities. The added presence of Joanna Newsom’ harp on the title track adds a light and deft charm as well as star billing that give this album greater reach. The sound palate includes a rather extended melancholy trumpet at times, cello as ambient background tapestry, a surprisingly humble flute and discrete percussion.
All that said and done it is the lyrics that are distinct; “mending fences that lead back to you’, “daring aerialist demanding wonders’, and “polished by lands which made the dove water green’. Taken out of context, like this, these words remain fragmented and absented from the whole; the tonality of delivery adds nuance and the bright crisp guitar a controlled environment for their presentation. Words and sound presented here have and will linger around my world longer than many sound documents that merely excite.
