to describe Toral’s magical flights as ambience would be to do them a great disservice, but this is underwater moonlight music to drift and dream to.

A écouter rêveusement dans l’attente de pouvoir, un jour prochain, observer le sillage des avions, tout en étant étendu sur le fond de l’océan.

Language is an apposite term for what happens in Space. The sounds are distinctly vocal at times: beyond the laser-like squelches and zaps is a field of clipped gurgles that could be R2D2 quotes, as though the record eavesdrops on a sound designer commissioned to devise an alien language.

Early Works predates the drone aesthetic of Sound Mind Sound Body, while its precision in ambient soundscapes is not far removed from that defining last year’s brilliant Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance.

Acclaimed Portuguese guitarist Toral has excavated private tapes dating from 1987 to 1990 to shed light on his later course of development.

A live recording of an exhibition by Rafael Toral in Paris, “Engine” is like watching a butterfly evolve from a cocoon to all his chromatic splendour. Scored for guitar, bass and a series of devices ranging from feedback circuits to analogue modular systems, this piece shows once and for all Rafael is not just a “guitarist”

本作は2003年7月の初来日時のライヴでも披露された音源をベースに新たに編集、マスタリングを施したもので、コンピュータでサイン・ウェイヴを自在に コントロールし、静寂感に満ちた電子音から夢幻的なサイケデリック・サウンドまで、オーガニックな変化に富んだピュアなエレクトロニクス・ミュージックを 作り上げている

The palette for the five Electric Babyland tracks on this disc—processed music-box—is a new one for Toral but he makes characteristic magic from it.

The disc starts to wind up (or perhaps down) with the third piece, “Rdm”, plunking the tongs in its most straightforward way. It twinkles like Sun Ra’s “Medicine for a Nightmare” melody, the speeds tweaked in the middle as it both warps fast and then slows before finally reaching a shimmering stasis.

While on the surface this music may sound simple, it actually took a great deal of time and concentration to create it. Heady and atmospheric in the best way possible…this album is a luxury for those willing to dabble in the unknown. Superb.