Aeriola Frequency

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Aeriola Frequency represents the logical extension of the Portuguese guitarist and composer Rafael Toral's work thus far. While Toral's work with improvisers as diverse as Rhys Chatham, Jim O'Rourke and John Zorn has revealed a spiky, abrasive player, the core of his work has been the solo work he's developed since 1987 and so far showcased on two albums, Sound Mind Sound Body (1994, AnAnAnA Records) and Wave Field (1995, originally released on Moneyland and later reissued by Jim O'Rourke on his Dexter's Cigar label). On those albums, Rafael created deep both disconcerting and somehow beautiful ambient soundscapes from heavily processed electric guitar. Aside from that work, Toral went all mad-professor with his No Noise Reduction, whose On Air was one of this writer's albums of 1997: NNR's manic and strictly lo-fi electronics manipulations are a soundtrack to Tex Avery-realized future-retro physics lab. So here's Toral with his third actual solo album, and he's pretty much taken the oppo to combine these twin trajectories of electronic improv and ambient soundscaping. As he explains in AF's sleevenotes, "The exploration of resonance from the guitar world as in Wave Field took me to later finding myself working with pure electronic resonance, the material of this piece." So, avoiding the physical world in any real sense (that is, the guitar), Toral has plugged the"out" from a delay unit into its "in" and, with the help of a simple EQ, recorded the sound of the unit "constantly nourishing and digesting itself". All of which might sound resolutely egg-headed, but the results are breathtaking. I'm drawn several times to thinking of Thomas Köner's earlier, glacial work; although this is more obviously lo-fidelity, there's a similar mix of overwhelming beauty, eerie calm. oddly painful, clashing overtones and epic timescale (the album features two pieces, the first clocking in at 46.19, the second at 20.17). This is not in any sense, then, "easy" but it is seductive in the extreme, and, I'd venture, Toral's best work to date. That said, I harbour a strong suspicion that there's a lot more to come.