you begin to get at least a glimmer of what, I think, Toral is working toward. The lovely, overdubbed trumpet chorale during the third and final track is both beautiful in and of itself and striking in context.

a free flowing, vaguely experimental textural soundscape that’s full of flavour and wonderfully engaging moments. The range of tones and sounds that he’s managed to acquire from such limited sources really is marvellous and overall if you’re a fan of the label or the artist you should seriously check this out. Excellent.

Space finds Portuguese musician Rafael Toral restructuring his approach to musical creativity. (…) a purity too measured to be real and too all-encompassing to look beyond.

Toral has created with ‘Space’ a document of his experimentations, taking a voyage into strange new worlds, into the outer realms of cosmic exploration – pulses, drones, obscure noises from undiscovered dimensions.

He obtains trills, decays, and tonal variations on the opening track “Portable amplifier” that one might expect from a wind instrument blown by a master. (…) Plenty of people say that they make creative music — Rafael Toral delivers it.

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.

Machine music of the first order, Space Solo 1 is the pure work of a pure agonist. In terms of uncovering new methods of origination and the accompanying demands of continuing to up the ante among listeners, Toral has departed the safety of the pale and begun demarcation of his very own protectorate.

Uh.. that is to say, timeless, and at the same time totally up to the minute. Amazing.

he leaves room for open air white noise that’s pretty hush. But not too much, as there’s a sense of antsy, frictitious disorder at play. Echo Feed plays into the whole notion that life may exist outside our perception with its nod to 50’s b-movie elongated bleeps and warm vortex exterior, built for two.

in 1995 he found himself in the hackers’ paradise of Amsterdam’s STEIM improvising with “a modified toy with a messed-up pitch control”. But there’s a maturity to Space and Space Solo 1 that’s lacking in the earlier work, a sense that Toral has finally…