We’ve been paying close attention to the Mexico City based label Umor Rex and their carefully curated catalogue, and we think of it as a lighthouse during the storm. So, it was excellent news to find Nicolás Melmann and his new album Música Aperta featured there a couple months ago.
Consisting of three movements that grow in length, it embodies a feeling of stillness in time, where Melmann prefers to pause and zoom in on the clean details to stretch them into new parameters, and find beauty in the process; as if he was uncovering hints of texture, tone or resonance by casting a light on his infinite digital canvas.
Meditative hums and pastoral effects fill the background while the first part unfolds, reflective and bucolic, with everything from acoustic motifs to cinematic sound design. Though Melmann’s processed strings reach new heights in the second movement, where they feel cold and in dialogue with other elements, and new depths on the third, where they are warmer and intimate with the rest of the composition. The work is inspired by Erik Satie’s proto-minimalistic idea of ‘furniture music’ (musique d’ameublement), and wraps-up with a sustained tone that slowly glows and morphs inward in a nostalgic trail of sound – as if looking at Eno through a Northern Indian organic drone lens.
We were lucky enough to see Música Aperta presented in Barcelona a month ago, shining with the addition of sustained drones coming from a particular bellow-based wind instrument, in a hazy atmosphere embebed with some mid-century German abstractionism on screen.
Nicolás Melmann will be performing a piece inspired by the composer Morton Feldman in Festivalt (Krakow) on the 25th of June.