ei-mag

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. The sonic clarity of these solos—in each case the voice is unaccompanied by anything other than itself—offers the same unsettling and stark character as does the lighting technique employed by photographers for forensic imaging. The opening piece—“Portable Amplifier”—is derived from modified MS-2 amplifier feedback and a light-controlled filter intercut with interludes performed on amplified coil spring percussion. The sound itself resembles some clinical and macro study of what we might imagine happens when subjecting a small bit of willing plastic to being stretched, compressed, tweaked and twisted in a nearly terrifying level of detailed sqeaking that insists one experience every nuance and bit-level resolve of the event free of grain, free of distraction and completely free of any embellishment. Like excursions in the hard and the soft, continuous and discontinuous, round out the remaining four pieces, the last being a return to more of the first. The single-minded explorations dissect traces of delayed feedback, pitch manipulation and overlapping pulse waves, completing a sampling of unflinching work based on the quintessential components that comprise any and every thing else we think we hear.

KL