XLR8R

Part of an ongoing series including a release on Perdition Plastics, Cyclorama Lift 3 sees Portuguese avant-guitarist Rafael Toral setting aside that instrument in favor of the purity of electronic circuitry. Composed using only a mixing desk and delay, Cyclorama Lift 3 traces arcs of feedback as they cycle airily through the wires. Like an aural translation of the Aurora Borealis, tones morph and waft skyward, luminous and chameleon-skinned. Too fluid to be called austere, this is minimalism liquified, like the digital precision of Toral’s contemporaries melted down into mercurial ebb. As a meditation on the idea that “electronic resonance is everywhere in our electronically mediated perception of sounds,” it’s an uncharacteristically beautiful, even spiritual, take on the information age. Call it electric animism.
Phil Sherburne