Cyclorama Lift 3 (2000)

“true to Toral’s desire to show “the ghost in the machine” his music conveys real emotion and soul.” (Fällt)
“an uncharacteristically beautiful, even spiritual, take on the information age.” (XLR8R)

Tomlab (Köln, Germany), tom7 (CD EP, 2000)

Recorded at Noise Precision, Portugal, April 1998.
Produced by Rafael Toral.

notes by rafael toral
After i finished recording Cyclorama Lift 1, i realised it had some problems. Looking for improvement, i went on to record Cyclorama Lift 2, to make a better but also longer version. Having meanwhile decided to release those works, Cyclorama Lift 2 became Aeriola Frequency‘s main piece, followed by Cyclorama Lift 1. A few months later, it became clear to me that Cyclorama Lift 1 was really not good enough. Not only it had technical problems, it also had an emotional resonance i didn’t like (it sounded a bit sad to me), so i set to record new material. I wanted the second piece on the CD to have more joy, color and density. The first version from those new sessions was Cyclorama Lift 3. I was at first delighted with it, but soon realised it was too exhuberant, too rich to be on Aeriola Frequency. It was totally unbalanced with the comparatively austere Cyclorama Lift 2. I then recorded Cyclorama Lift 4, which came out denser as i expected, but surprisingly more relaxed and with a certain sort of spiritual mood that complemented Cyclorama Lift 2 very well. Aeriola Frequency was complete and later released on Chicago-based Perdition Plastics label. Cyclorama Lift is a piece about the idea that electronic resonance is everywhere in our electronically mediated perception of sounds. Like a ghost-in-the-machine. It’s 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. The circulating sound is electronic resonance.