Boomkat

Rafael Toral’s Space series of releases were brought to life last year in the most dramatic fashion with the epic Space, Toral making it quite clear that the album was merely the opener in a huge series of ten solo albums. Space Solo 1 is the first of these records and let me tell you now it’s got my brain splattered all over the nice clean white wall behind me. Continuing the themes explored on the first disc we again see Toral getting into the thick of it with home-made electronic doohickeys and portable amplifiers. This is DIY electronics at its best; screaming, hissing and scraping all the way to the final splutter and it is a devastatingly visceral listening experience. I must admit I’m a real sucker for anything with belching synthesizer sounds and machine hum in the background, but Toral is one of the masters of the genre and he sound perfectly at ease with his decomposing equipment. Whether he’s making feedback loops from small amplifiers or ear-piercing high pitched analogue wails it all sounds perfectly realised. There is a danger when producing this kind of music that the gear can take control of the artist rather than the other way around, but although you can hear in these improvisations a certain amount of serendipity there is never the sense that Toral loses control. His keen ear for the right amount of experimentation is what holds this disc together and whether we are hearing a single blip in a wave of silence or a tape-delay drenched drone buzzing with saturation it is both impressively listenable and mind-blowingly experimental. Fans of the new wave of noise music and power electronics (Wolf Eyes, Jessica Rylan et al) would be wise to invest in this disc, it shows someone who really knows their craft simply revelling in it, and what more can you ask for than this? Excellent stuff and a huge recommendation…