records > aeriola frequency

Perdition Plastics Chicago, USA per008 (CD, 1998). Recorded at Noise Precision, Portugal, Dec. 1997 and Apr. 1998.

Aeriola Frequency was listed by The Wire magazine as one of the best records in 1999 ("outer limits" section).

Notes by Rafael Toral:

The exploration of resonance from the guitar world as in Wave Field took me to later finding myself working with pure electronic resonance, the material of this piece. Cyclorama Lift is performed with an empty circuit, basically a feedback loop using as main instruments two 8-second delays and a 4-band parametric equalizer. There's no input, the loop is constantly nourishing and digesting itself.

Todos os espaços têm uma característica acústica, e a ressonância tem um papel importante na sua forma e definição. Há frequências de ressonância práticamente onde quer que vamos e na maior parte das vezes não damos por elas. Por outro lado, a nossa experiência do mundo é, numa medida substancial, através de meios electrónicos. E a ressonância é também um atributo dos circuitos electrónicos, do mesmo modo alheios à nossa atenção. Lembrando alguns exemplos de sons que vivem connosco, os osciladores (um elemento básico dos sintetizadores) e os equalizadores (integrados em práticamente todas as mesas de mistura de som no mundo) são dispositivos de ressonância. Sintonizar um rádio é, em muitos casos, simplesmente seleccionar uma frequência de ressonância. A maior parte dos sons produzidos pela tecnologia chegam até nós graças à ocorrência de ressonância electrónica em várias fases da sua produção e transmissão. Estou assim a dar forma à ideia de a ressonância (um material musical) estar em todo o lado no mundo electrónico. Seguindo esta direcção tive, pois, que pensar num dispositivo musical que me permitisse tocar ressonância, em vez de tocar "sons". Para trabalhar com ressonância pura num domínio puramente electrónico, precisaria de um circuito vazio, que não tivesse nada a entrar do exterior e não processasse nada a não ser a si próprio. Algo que pudesse usar para sondar o espectro de audio, pesquisando frequências, aumentando e enformando larguras de banda. O " loop" contínuamente se alimenta a si próprio ao mesmo tempo que se auto-digere. Assemelha-se a uma viagem por um campo sonoro, sempre desdobrando-se em novas paisagens.

text by David Toop

Whether you live in Lisbon, London or Lahore, the ordering of things has become a world of possible alternatives. The ordering of sound into musical form is now open to every possibility in the world beyond sound. Once governed by pitch relationships, ordered into an evolving harmonic system, sound might now reflect the extra-musical systems of biology, machines, thought, chance, social relations, chemical effect, political models or body movement.

These are some of the possibilities. Music can be inspired by a beehive, the malfunction of a machine, an ecosystem, the reflex reactions of another musician, a state of consciousness, a digital glitch, robotics, an ancient divinatory book, an historical incident, the pulse of a city, rhythmic variation, a cinematic mise en scène , a fragment of captured documentation, turbulent water, a particle of speech, a feedback loop, the logic of software, the pattern of the heavens. Perhaps it starts with a guitar. A sound suddenly exists. A stone in water, over time, furred by green moss. A sheet of metal, over time, mottled and scarred by rust. A slice of bread, over time, growing into a lush forest of mould. A jar of beans, over time, sprouting edible horned crooked limbs. A crystal garden, the sound grows in reeds and streams, blown like spider web strands, glittering and invisible, pulsing with translucent colour, bubbling and imploding, fraying and powdering. Cloud formations, sound clusters curl and bump, low fat throbs breaking through frost patterns of extruded feedback.

Sounds cycle, over time; sounds slither through time, disguised as pitch relationships. Like qualities of air, sounds meet and become each other. The sound seems to rise, to lift, though this is an illusion. Although the sound seems to mirror patterns in the observable world, the sound is learning the order of things. The sound is learning to develop, to think, to live.

David Toop

reviews

Solo due lunghissime tracce chiamate Cyclorama Lift 2 e 4, nel nuovo Rafael Toral (vedi BU#5): "Le risonanze di chitarra esplorate in Wave Field mi hanno portato ad analizzare la pura risonanza elettronica, che è quello che ho fatto in quest'album. Cyclorama Lift è stato realizzato con un circuito vuoto, fondamentalmente un feedback mandato in loopato utilizzando come 'strumenti' principali due delays da 8 secondi e un equalizzatore parametrico a 4 bande. Non c'è input, il loop si genera e riclicla costantemente."
Suono ambientale? Minimalismo? Ipnotico e stordente, soprattutto. Solo un sibilo modulato che sale e scende per frequenze circolari e oblunghe, ellittiche, statiche. Suoni nascosti in ogni anfratto, insopportabili a tratti e ambigui per sempre. Un mondo intero che nasce solo per implodere. Un giorno il cinema sarà un chip che applicheremo al cervello, con film inesistenti per tracce e suoni inesistenti. Libertà  d'immaginazione. Sarà qualcosa come Aeriola Frequency. Il film saremo noi. Necessiteranno cuffie che separino dal mondo, un tuffo in mare ed
eccitazione più che naturale.
 
Stefano I. Bianchi, BlowUp

AT FIRST LISTEN I felt cold pockets of air circulating about the room as a lilting hum subtly became recognizable as guitar resonance ("Cyclorama Lift 2"). I paid no attention to what these pieces consisted of. What they really were recordings of. A few minutes after grabing a drink and sitting down across from my JBLs - I started reading the liner notes describing a work exploring a "pure electronic resonance." Over an hour later I concluded this, was a steady liqufied note changing pitch and without rest. An electronic thrumming wave trapped in a small aluiminum box - floating in space - tied to a shelf - on Mir.

Green Mountain Music

Aeriola Frequency represents the logical extension of the Portuguese guitarist and composer Rafael Toral's work thus far. While Toral's work with improvisers as diverse as Rhys Chatham, Jim O'Rourke and John Zorn has revealed a spiky, abrasive player, the core of his work has been the solo work he's developed since 1987 and so far showcased on two albums, Sound Mind Sound Body (1994, AnAnAnA Records) and Wave Field (1995, originally released on Moneyland and later reissued by Jim O'Rourke on his Dexter's Cigar label). On those albums, Rafael created deep both disconcerting and somehow beautiful ambient soundscapes from heavily processed electric guitar. Aside from that work, Toral went all mad-professor with his No Noise Reduction, whose On Air was one of this writer's albums of 1997: NNR's manic and strictly lo-fi electronics manipulations are a soundtrack to Tex Avery-realized future-retro physics lab.

So here's Toral with his third actual solo album, and he's pretty much taken the oppo to combine these twin trajectories of electronic improv and ambient soundscaping. As he explains in AF's sleevenotes, "The exploration of resonance from the guitar world as in Wave Field took me to later finding myself working with pure electronic resonance, the material of this piece." So, avoiding the physical world in any real sense (that is, the guitar), Toral has plugged the"out" from a delay unit into its "in" and, with the help of a simple EQ, recorded the sound of the unit "constantly nourishing and digesting itself". All of which might sound resolutely egg-headed, but the results are breathtaking. I'm drawn several times to thinking of Thomas Köner's earlier, glacial work; although this is more obviously lo-fidelity, there's a similar mix of overwhelming beauty, eerie calm. oddly painful, clashing overtones and epic timescale (the album features two pieces, the first clocking in at 46.19, the second at 20.17). This is not in any sense, then, "easy" but it is seductive in the extreme, and, I'd venture, Toral's best work to date. That said, I harbour a strong suspicion that there's a lot more to come.
 
Motion

Toral is a guitarist who has gained some recognition, mainly through his collaborations with Thurston Moore and Jim O'Rourke. His solo material shows a great interest in fields, soundfields, soundpatterns or what shall we call it: long stretched tones, usually played by the guitar, and that have little changes going round. Not entirely ambient, not entirely improvised, certainly not jumpy going back and forth. The two pieces on this CD are made with just feedback (not uncommonly to use for a guitarist, I'd say looking a history). Not sound is fed into the machines, it's sound feeding itself with more sound. But more is less here. Both pieces (which certainly don't sound the same!) evolve slowly, probably without moving. I am reminded of a roman catholic ritual were they make two steps forward and then one back: this music is kinda like that. Whenever it goes forward, it seems to be going backward at the same time. And just before that, and just after that. If you are with us for a long time, you know I simply just like this kind of work.
 
(FdW) in VITAL WEEKLY 161

Il portoghese Rafael Toral ha fatto parlare di se' nei circoli della neo-avanguardia (Phil Niblock, John Zorn, Sonic Youth) per via di un approccio del tutto personale al suono della chitarra e per le sue tessiture sonore fatte praticamente di nulla. Jim O'Rourke, avendo fatto ristampare "Wave Fields" su Drag City, ha contribuito a far conoscere in giro il nome di questo giovane musicista. "Aeriola Frequency", costituito unicamente da due lunghissime ed estenuanti piece, "Cyclorama Lift 1/4", ha pero' tutte le carte in regola per centrare pienamente il segno. Il suono e' semplicemente un infinito loop di chitarra dalle variazioni infinitesimali talmente travistato da risultare una nebulosa sonora internamente cangiante. Il punto di forza di queste composizioni, che devono tutto a Cage e a Brian Eno, e' l'indiscutibile fascino che emanano nell'ascoltatore, che si sente come immerso in un'atmosfera lunare. Rispetto agli altri chitarristi creativi della nuova avanguardia come Dean Roberts e Kevin Drumm, Toral e' il piu' umano e meno accademico. Con "Aeriola Frequency" possiamo dire di avere avuto un'altra "Discreet Music" trent'anni dopo.

di Leonardo Di Maio, scaruffi.com

While Rafael Toral's Wave Field explored the soundscapes that could be formed using guitar tones, Aeriola Frequency applies the same approach to a rather different sound source. The record stands as one of few releases in history to have no source of sound -- all of the tones used to create its two long compositions were drawn from a feedback loop consisting of two delays and an equalizer, with no actual input. This leaves "Cyclorama Lift 2" (46 minutes) and "Cyclorama Lift 4" (20 minutes) as exercises in electronic resonance -- and surprisingly enough, Toral draws enough movement from his sound source to create pieces more dynamic than the typical ambient release.

Nitsuh Abebe, allmusic guide