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MUSICA ELECTROACUSTICA MEXICANA
“De Vez En Vez” / “From Time To Time”
Various Composers
Quidecim, 47:00, quindecim.com.mx
Available from Carla Bergés and Theo Hernández at the Colección Bellas Artes, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City. tel: 011 5255 5510-1598; 5512-2593 x241
by Steve Koenig
México is rich with many types of musical traditions, from folk to pop to composed. There is a great underground where rock-punk-electronics-freejazz meets. Discs are sold and traded at the weekly open CD swapmarket at El Chopo in México City. Even the great classical composers of México, Manuel Ponce and Silvestre Revueltas, have been supremely underrepresented in the catalogs, even within México. Only a few years ago I had the pleasure to hear (and write about: http://www.lafolia.com/koenig3v2n4.html) the first recording of the complete piano works of Ponce on a seven disc Sony set that was never exported, and often even hard to find in México City, despite superlative performances by maestro Hector Rojas. After two years, the volumes were sold individually, but I encourage anyone interested to buy the complete set, which contains an excellent bilingual booklet discussing every single work.*
1. Guillermo DE MENDíA. “Life Is Nothing But A Dream.”
Clouds of metal sparkles with vocalized nebulae. The fade from the Rolling Stones’ “2000 Light Years From Home.” Bizarre alien chirps.
2. Carlos SANDOVAL. “Homenaje.”
Whistle-whispering sounds making a kind of structural hocketus. This would easily fit in with Metamkine’s Cinema Pour l’Oreille series; it is visual in effect. It’s too controlled to be called whimsical, but there’s a definite frolicking humor here. It ends with a few low mallet plinks, and low bass wind whipped raps and gurgles.
3. Samir MENACERI. “Extinción.”
Multilayered primeval (frogs, water, etc.) with distorto guitars well as long swaths of cinematic synth and xylophonic variations.
4. Roberto MORALES. “Mineral de Cata.”
I first encountered Morales, the head of the electronic studios at the University of Guanajuato, in a disc of Latin American electrocousic music accompanyingThe Leonardo Music Journal, and liked him a lot. Here we hear pipes and nosewhistles (actually, they are pre-Hispanic flutes). Little percussions as if the Art Ensemble of Chicago meets the pre-Columbian muse. Good stuff.
5. Roberto MEDINA. “Marina.”
Science fiction proglike synth driftscapes with poercussive elements. Ominous synths with low bass timpanic sounds. One of my favorites here.
6. Antonio RUSSEK. “De vez en vez,”
Antonio Russek “created strained glass objects and sculptures to explore their sounds.” I’m not surprised; at first the piece is a little too pretty, then there’s a low grind boing and chimey sounds, busy and fugue-like. Slowed, low Nancarrow plucks, an interesting texture. Spaceship cicadas rising and falling on harpsichord popcorn.
7. Eduardo SOTO MILLáN. “Mexihco.”
A low whoosh enters, increasingly textured and dramatic. A haunting refrain invoking the name “Mexihco.” Tenor Carlos Pascual has a tone much like that of (baritone) Thomas Buckner. It brings up, not imitatively but emotionally, Revueltas’ “Sensemaya” and Villa Lobos’ “Floresta do Amazonas.” As the electronic chord varies, there are little buggy voices, like tiny insects or - the Mothers of Invention “Concentration Moon.” As a coda, the all previous sounds all drop out replaces by silence, then the sound of rubbed gongs rise, and come to an abrupt head; its own “A Day In The Life.” Composer Eduardo Soto Millán has exquisite credentials, but the work is what matters, and here it is the bests of all words and all times; a superb piece. His own CD Interiors is excellent, but long unavailable.
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