records > Harmonic Series 2

Headz Tokyo, Japan Headz 24 (CD, 2004)

tracks

Harmonic Series 2
Computer generated sinewaves, custom software, guitar and analog electronics.

Since i have always been involved with the inner structures of sound, working with the harmonic series comes as a natural move, since harmonics are well known to guitarists. Thus, inspired by Fourier's theory, i chose to work with the most basic element of sound synthesis, the sinewave.
Harmonic Series is my first project using the computer as a musical instrument. Using with the computer is a development of my work with analog modular systems and it's part of an ongoing process, of changing my whole approach to both composition and performance. While doing so, i also take the opportunity to distance myself from some common approaches to computer music performance and production.

Rafael Toral
Lisboa, November 2003

reviews


This Japanese-only release is the follow-up to Toral's 2003 Table of the Elements LP Harmonic Series 0 (what happened to number one, the story doesn't say), the first installment in a series of recordings and performances documenting the Portuguese guitarist's trade-in of his analog devices for a computer. The heart and soul of Harmonic Series 2 consists of computer generated sine waves. Listeners with an acute allergy to Sachiko M's music should not click the "back" button too quickly, as Toral's approach is a hundred times warmer, gentler and inviting. Yes, the piece starts on a single sine wave. Yes, most of it revolves around the careful placement of meticulously close sine waves in the left and right stereo channels to create aural effects. But it doesn't end here. Toral adds layer upon layer of treated sine waves, along with guitar soundscapes and analog electronics. If the piece takes some time to take off, it eventually reaches a gorgeous state of flux where sine waves and guitars fuse into a single complex organism. It shimmers from all angles as it slowly revolves in front of our ears -- like an irregular gem reflecting rays of light as it revolves on its display stool. When the piece simmers down two minutes before the end, it leaves a cruel empty space, a vacuum you feel compelled to fill up by hitting the "Play" button again. And yet this album is not particularly original or groundbreaking. But it holds an undeniable beauty and presents it with total control over sound quality, density and richness.

François Couture, allmusic guide




I don't think it's simply a coincidence that the cover art of this newest release from Rafael Toral features photos of high-tension power lines towering massively over rather nondescript landscapes while bathed in the almost purple hues of a setting sun. On Harmonic Series 2, he takes the sounds of three different inputs and distills them down to their most base levels, creating one long droning piece that almost sounds like the musical equivalent of those humming tones that you can hear when standing under such large conduits of electricity.
Filtering computer-generated sinewave, guitar, and analog electronics through custom-made software, Toral is moving in much different directions here than he has even in the past. This is not a release for those with a short attention span or those adverse to extremely minimal electronic music. Over the course of 43 minutes, a series of very subtlely changing tones overlap and change, forcing the listener to have patience and wait for very small movements in sound.
Having toured and collaborated with everyone from Sonic Youth to Phil Niblock to Christian Fennesz and John Zorn, Toral definitely has a high pedigree in terms his output, but while this piece has interesting theory behind it, it sounds like something created to accompany an installation of some sort rather than a casual listening experience. Because of the building blocks of the piece, it completely falls into the realm of cold electronic music and even as a variable-attention ambient piece it feels too invasive. Although there is an ocassional flicker of warmth, it's nearly impossible to take the somewhat harsh edge off the sound of the buzzing sinewave, and in the end Harmonic Series 2 feels more like a clinical experiment in alien landscapes or an attempt to portray musically the sound of the energy powering the performance.

almostcool




Um longo tema de quarenta e dois minutos e dezanove segundos, repõe Rafael Toral nos escaparates musicais após uma cuidada recapitulação da sua obra através da Tom Lab e dos seus originais na Touch. Cada vez mais dedicado à matemática do/no som, Rafael Toral estrutura agora a sua obra em torno das ondas sinusoidais, talvez a mais básica e óbvia das modulações harmónicas. Mas o verdadeiro marco deste disco é o uso de computador pela primeira vez: o computador é agora o seu gerador e mesa de trabalho. Mas ao contrário do que seria normal esperar, o computador em nada altera a sua pesquisa sonora: Rafael Toral continua o seu estudo em torno dos diversos sistemas modulares analógicos e nada é beliscado nesta composição com as potencialidade de execução e manipulação de software. Aliás, não deixa de ser curioso que, com o computador, sejam justamente as sinusoidais as harmónicas escolhidas. E aqui reside a sua arte: dificilmente encontramos trabalho mais atento, meticuloso e, ao mesmo tempo, mais despojado que este. Toral, longe já dos seus trabalhos ambientais de início, procura a destilação total da harmonia, a sublimação do Ambiental. Passados os minutos iniciais de introdução, toda a restante «Harmonic Series 2» é um campo de tensão e surpresa que apenas os mais pacientes podem ter recompensa. No final, a peça torna-se cristal pelo silêncio. Continua a ser música, afinal a essência de muita da música que conhecemos - resta apenas termos curiosidade para tamanha empreitada.

Ananana





Last I heard from this Japanese label was their release of Fennesz's Live in Japan, something of a surprise addition to that artist's catalogue, and one that offered both a glimpse at new developments in his too-familiar style, and a pleasantly indulgent rebuff against those critics ready to predict, or pounce on, a new masterpiece. On its latest release, Headz gives another digital guitar hero, Rafael Toral, a similar opportunity to avoid quick canonization and indulge some new ideas over the course of one disc-length track. On past records, Toral produced everything from ecstatic, shoegazing jams to multi-sectioned, epic-length textural explorations, often using the juxtaposition between his more intentionally rockist moments and the purer ambient passages to create an unique soundworld that embraces both with equal fervor. Harmonic Series 2 is a significant departure from the digestible, pop-length drones that filled Toral's last record, The Violence of Discovery, The Calm of Acceptance, though the switch to less-concise, more demanding composition is welcome. The 43-min. piece, for sinewave, guitar and analog electronics, marks the artist's first use of the computer as autonomous musical instrument, its waveforms acting as the synthetic equivalent of a guitarist's blending harmonic tones. Toral's use of the sinewave lies far from the alienating compositions usually associated with such pure and relentless sounds, and while Harmonic Series does avoid the cosmic elegance that has characterized the artist's work thus far, the piece remains surprisingly inviting. Weightless strands of e-bowed feedback and gently throbbing harmonic layers intertwine with the computer's tones to create the most substantial portions of the composition, a fluid surface of constant dissolve and regeneration. Through a meticulous cycle of blends and pans, Toral reaches a powerful sonic density from the tight flux of three or four blank tones rather than a congestion or distortion of the stereo field. The gritty, psychedelic edge that touched Toral's early work is totally absent; instead Harmonic Series seems to develop out of the resulting negative space, a lyric-less tone poem to the information age, full of haunting, passive currents. Parts of the piece even recall the warping effects in Coil's Time Machines. The artwork tells it best: gone are the floating passenger jets that graced the covers of so many Toral recordings; here he offers only dark futurism, an empty sky stalked by silent electrical towers. Given the track's length and the resistance of the pure tones to any recognizable or repeated dynamic, an overarching mood or directive within Harmonic Series is hard to locate. The steady flow and warm tonalities of the piece keep it inviting, but never to the rapturous extremes of the artist's other long-form composition, Wave Field. It seems fitting, if a bit predictable or even overstated on such a sprawling release, that the artist's embrace of new technology should lead his music towards more wayward, alien territories.

Andrew Culler, brainwashed




To say that Rafael Toral plays drones is a bit like saying that Neil Young plays rock music; the statement is indisputably true, but so broad that it’s meaningless. The Portuguese multi-instrumentalist has dug so deeply into the fertile ground of continuous sounds that it has become necessary to parse what he’s doing with them at different points in his career. The title of Harmonic Series 2 betrays its status as part of a discreet phase in Toral’s development. Given recent developments in his live performances, which discard drones in favor of a silent backdrop, it’s likely a transitional one. But it’s no less worthy for that; both this CD – which is based on his 2003 performances in Japan but was actually recorded after a tour in Lisbon – and its one-sided vinyl predecessor Harmonic Series 0 (Table of the Elements), are quite lovely.
After Touch released his 2001 masterpiece Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance, Toral knew that he’d taken his ambient guitar work to a peak, and rather than rehash it he started looking for something else to do. The Harmonic Series introduced a new instrument – the computer – and the CD, unlike the LP, constitutes a step away from the guitar. Toral used some of its effects, but left the instrument itself in its case.
The technology changed, but the methodology – using continuous tones to explore and manipulate harmonics – is very much in line with his earlier work. Computer-generated sine waves rise and fall against a backdrop that modulates between shimmering hums and low, throaty growls. Higher-pitched slivers of feedback and distant buzzes drift in and out of the piece, like high cirrus clouds and distant, isolated thunderheads.
It’s easy to lose yourself in the gorgeous, multi-hued wash of sound, but don your headphones and the record changes as abruptly as a 3-D movie does when you put on those silly glasses. Each aural element moves in carefully calibrated relation to the others; the slow spiral and uplift of fluttering tones and the narrowing and widening of pitch intervals imparts a sense of wonder similar to the one I felt when I watched a dusk gathering of gasbags at Albuquerque’s Balloon Festival.
It must be a heady thing to be capable of summoning such beauty. While I give Toral credit for taking the gutsy artistic path of putting his facility aside after he’s perfected it, I’m glad that he left this artifact of his explorations.

Bill Meyer, Dusted magazine



Stando alle dichiarazioni de noe-minimalista portighese, il secondo volume dell'Harmonic Series, iniziata su vinile Table of the Elements, è l'ultimo documento di una devozione per il suono continuo coltivata nel susseguirsi di permutazioni di una medesima idea e di una medesima pratica. Nell'attesa di nuove direzioni, non si può che godere di questo lungo brano di commiato che aggiunge un computer per la generazione di onde sinusoidali alla consueta formula chitarra elettrica + effetti analogici. Il disco si basa su una serie di performance tenutesi nel 2003 in Giappone e offre un ultimo sguardo, più contemplativo e lineare del solito, su un suono ambient/ drone ormai classico. Chapeau.

Francesco Tenaglia, BlowUp