Remember “fusion”? Remember “new age”? If you have any weakness for either of those formerly if marginally legit species of music, you’ll very likely find some pleasurable moments on this program of original pieces from a very talented and adventurous group of musicians from Spain. There’s really no way to tell what this disc is about: the title offers little help, nor do the liner notes, which are nothing more than selected quotes from writers such as H.G. Wells, Proust, Rilke, and Javier Marías. The quotes are in the authors’ original languages and no translations are provided. However, when you listen to the music, 13 tracks with titles such as “Combustión espontánea”, “Por un tubo”, and “Esto es para ti” (again, with no translations), you realize that depth and artistic discovery are not the point here. Rather, it’s all about dimensions–of sound, space, and time–instead of form and structure and function.
A number of modern classical composers already have explored such notions–Pärt, Kancheli, and Gorecki, to name a few–but this music sounds less like their studied, formally laid out efforts and more like, well, new age fusion. Here’s a sample: “Nocturno 2”, a kind of Satie-like dreamy piano piece, is followed by squeaky, chirpy whistling noises accompanied by various drums, then flute, all of which morphs into a kind of cacophony of jungle-inspired sounds; and the cacophony continues in “Esa otra cosa”, a wind-and-percussion-driven arrhythmic free-for-all that suddenly shifts to a vibraphone-led cool Caribbean-inspired dance-beat. Aimless noodling is the order in tunes like “L’impossible amour”, and we also get the obligatory spacey synthesizer piece (“Espuma de aire”). Again, if you like this sort of thing, there’s plenty to savor, including lots of unusual sounds and instrumental colors, produced by everything from double bass, clarinet, and violin, to frame drum, bodhran, marimba, bouzouki, pandero, cántaro, nyckelharpa, cardboard tubes, and various unnamed “soundmaking objects”.
Glossa is one of those record labels that’s not afraid to offer something out of the ordinary, and even though there’s nothing groundbreaking here, the program and these musicians shed light on a corner of the music world that’s certainly vital, stylistically inclusive, and, yes, even entertaining. The sound is excellent, most impressive in its vivid reproduction of percussion instruments; but some of those unusual “soundmaking objects” kept fooling me into thinking something was wrong with my speakers.
