• Spectral
    Evolution on
    Best of 2024

    Spectral Evolution has appeared in several Best of 2024 list polls, most notably reaching #14 on Pitchfork, #7 in The Quietus and #2 in The Wire magazine. On Stereogum‘s 10 Best Experimental Albums it is number 1.

Photo by Vera Marmelo

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  • Upcoming live in 2025

    Upcoming live in 2025

    Spectral Evolution concerts in Quad surround are coming up into 2025.It has been intense, i could guess people would love the new album, but i wasn’t expecting the LP to…

  • Spectral Evolution Release

    Spectral Evolution Release

    Today, February 23, is Spectral Evolution’s release date. Thank you Jim O’Rourke for your choice to release this on a resurfacing Moikai.Album of the Week on The Quietus and Boomkat, available on many platforms.…

  • Spectral Evolution

    Spectral Evolution

    I am beyond happy to announce Spectral Evolution, the most difficult and ambitious record i ever did, and also quite possibly the best ever. This is a defining moment, a new…

  • Space Quartet’s Last Set

    Space Quartet’s Last Set

    The Space Quartet’s Last Set was also the best ever. Under the working conditions and possibilities of these times, the Space Quartet has reached as far as it possibly could. Going further…

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  • Rafael Toral, born in Lisbon, 1967 has been intrigued by the potential of sound and the functions of music since he was a teenager. As a producer, composer and performer, he has been deeply involved with RockAmbientContemporaryElectronic and Free Jazz music in different periods of his life.

    Working with electric guitar and electronics, in the 1990’s he pioneered a blend of Ambient and Rock and recorded acclaimed albums like Wave Field or Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance. By the early 2000’s he arrived to a sense of accomplishment about his previous 15 years of work, also realizing the world needed a different creative response. In a transition to vulnerable action, he launched the alien-sounding Space Program in 2004, using experimental electronic instruments. It was an ambitious long-term project exploring an approach to electronic music based on silence, through decision making and physical gesture, in a way inspired by post-free Jazz. The resulting music, “melodic without notes, rhythmic with no beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free – riddled with paradox but full of clarity and space”, has been described as “a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers”.

    In the ensuing 15 years and beyond, he practiced an understanding of silence as “space”, with a clear function in music creation but also as a metaphor for social relationships and a stance on information and sensory overload.

    In 2017, having concluded the Space Program’s recording series, the release of Moon Field marks the beginning of transition to a new phase, in a way that builds on recent developments (mainly with the Space Quartet) but also integrates them with other elements. Returning to the electric guitar with a renewed interest in harmony, Toral synthesized all of the above on the newest Spectral Evolution album, released in February 2024.

    Performing solo or in numerous collaborations (including Jim O’Rourke, Sei Miguel, Chris Corsano, John Edwards, Evan Parker, Tatsuya Nakatani, Manuel Mota, Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Christian Marclay, Sonic Youth, Rhys Chatham, Lee Ranaldo, Eiko Ishibashi, and many others), he has been touring throughout Europe, Canada, USA, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia.

    Also active in visual and spatial arts, Toral has produced video and several Installations from 1994 to 2003.
    In 2014 he relocated to the mountains in central Portugal for a more sustainable life.