records > wave field

tracks:

US Version (Reissue) Dexter's Cigar Chicago, USA dex14 (CD, 1998).

Original Release Moneyland Records Lisboa, Portugal MR$ 0595 (CD, 1995)

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US Wave Field reissue was listed by Amazon.com as being within the 100 best records released in the USA in 1998. The original release was considered by Portuguese weekly Expresso as one of the best records of 1995.

reviews

"This record is what every guitar/drone/crunch/snap,crack and pop afficionado has ever wanted. It's epic, it's intimate, it's a personally served 10 course meal at a table for two at the edge of the Grand Canyon." Dedicated to Alvin Lucier, with instructions to be played "very soft or very loud," this features Toral's trademark sound (lush, interstellar ambiance - not immediately identifiable as guitar-derived) at its finest. Purely radiant and suitable for the ultimate imersion, this is an artifact of sonic genius.

Release notes at Forced Exposure

Resounding frequencies overlap and gyrate, wiggling their way inside your body. The notes, tones, and clusters of guitar-induced and effects-generated notes reverberate amongst each other. It almost sounds underwater: if whales used guitars and electronics to sing to one another, it might sound like this. Wave Field is an astonishing, left-field work, a drone fan's dream. It's everything you wanted from Fripp & Eno's No Pussyfooting and Spacemen 3's Dreamweapon & very nearly got: full, dynamic layers of blissful, amp-moaning pleasure-noise that ebbs and flows like the sea.

Mike McGonigal, Ney York Press, March 1998

Despite widespread indifference in his native land, Lisbon-based Rafael Toral has released a series of CDs that push the boundaries of musical genres as well as the limits of his instrument, establishing him as one of the most gifted and innovative guitarists of the decade. Played at low volume, Wave Field (Moneyland) is a beautiful record whose liquid flow is reminiscent of Brian Eno's experiments with ambient music. Turn it up and it becomes a churning, mesmerizing, layered soundcape of molten feedback and chiming overtones.

Bill Meyer, Chicago Reader, Oct 1996





Portuguese musician Rafael Toral uses a Fender Jaguar and a series of effects to create beautiful, soaring ambient drones, three of which are collected on Wave Field: the 30-minute "Wave Field 5," the 16-minute "Wave Field 6," and a three-minute edit of the complete piece. The album's art is a tribute to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (a hazy red close-up of a Fender Jaguar's neck), which is somewhat of a reference point for Toral's aims -- his soundscapes are thoroughly ambient textures, but with a rock-guitar background that separates them from electronically based ambient projects.

Nitsuh Abebe, allmusic guide





From Lisbon, Portugal, comes this masterpiece of ambient guitar -- an exercise in pure bliss. Droning guitar oscillations overlap in ecstatic harmonic resonations, to later be precisely looped, processed, and edited over the course of a year on a personal computer. It sounds like a liquid distillation of My Bloody Valentine's revelatory Loveless (the cover is an homage to that record), and has the heady, soundscape qualities of No Pussyfooting by Fripp and Eno, except that it's more lush, more beautiful, and thoroughly modern-sounding. Rafael Toral will change the way you perceive the guitar, and lull you to a sweet sleep while he's doing it.

Mike McGonigal, Media Nugget

Too dirty to call ambient, too gentle to call industrial, Toral's unique sound entails a static investigation of space and volume. Toral's approach has the guttural power of rock, but it also carries the wavelike contemplation of a rich minimalist like Morton Feldman.

John Corbett, Chicago Reader, Nov. 1995

Le nouveau disque de RAFAEL TORAL est à localiser quelque part dans des régions proches de l'Ambient Music. Wave Field est une multitude de vagues sonores déferlantes, de timbres dérivants l'un sur l'autre. Le guitariste portugais surdoué nous entraine sur des mouvements ondulatoires surprenants.

Orkhêstra, Nov. 1998