Igloo Magazine

Portugese guitarist and electronic composer Rafael Toral delivers a stuntifying new release based in space. To accomplish this he’s employed filters, empty circuits and feedback, sparsely construed to make for a minimalist collage that pops, hides away and squeaks as if repelling a wooden floor in rubber soles. Toral is equipped with a board full of effects that he then fashions like a clown twisting balloons into poodles, though the result is far more contagious. There’s something as sinister, but not as, er, clownish to these bloated antics. By manipulating various gassy overtures, sliding and stretching them into new sound shapes it becomes aural cinema. The faster he works the more removed and expressionist the sounds of Space Solo 1 become. And yes 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.

TJ Norris, Igloo Magazine, Oct 2007