Wave Field

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Wave Field, an album of ambient soundscapes made by the young and almost unknown Portuguese guitarist and composer Rafael Toral, is actually a reissue of an album released in 1995 on Portugal's Moneyland. It's now unearthed on fellow guitarist Jim O'Rourke's Dexter's Cigar which has already provided a home for reissues of work by such maverick guitarists as Henry Kaiser, Derek Bailey and Loren Mazzacane Connors. Toral's working methods are, on the surface, hardly hi tech or indeed particularly new: signals from the vibrating body of a Fender Jaguar are sent down an FX chain of filters and delays to produce ever-so-slowly changing, and very long, pieces (the album's opener clocks in at over half an hour). Yet Rafael's music is quite startlingly lovely, recalling in its shimmering beauty On Land-period Brian Eno or early work by Thomas Köner.