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Browse by Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Wave Field
Label: DEXTER'S CIGAR
Format: CD
Price: $13.50
Catalog #: DEX 014CD
Reissue of the 2nd album by this Portuguese guitarist/composer, originally issued by the small Moneyland label 1995, which was not widely distributed. "This record is what every guitar/drone/crunch/snap,crack and pop afficionado has ever wanted. It's epic, it's intimate, it's a personally served 10 course meal at a table for two at the edge of the Grand Canyon." Dedicated to Alvin Lucier, with instructions to be played "very soft or very loud," this features Toral's trademark sound (lush, interstellar ambiance -- not immediately identifiable as guitar-derived) at its finest. Purely radiant and suitable for the ultimate immersion, this is an artifact of sonic genius. "The wave field is located somewhere inn far away region of the ambient territory, close to the frontier with a swampy area where abstract vibrations from liquid rock are solved under noise-charged clouds echoing some electrical irradiation. 'Wave Field 5' and '6' were recorded to hard disk from the vibrating body of a Fender Jaguar wired through a Morley wah, Korg guitar synth (no synth, filters only), Dod graphic EQ, Alesis reverb and compressor, Ashly Parametric EQ and Sansamp." -- Toral.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Harmonic Series 2
Label: HEADZ (JAPAN)
Format: CD
Price: $18.00
Catalog #: HEADZ 024CD
Japanese-only release. Recorded live in Japan in 2003, "Harmonic Series 2" is a 43 minute piece for computer generated sinewaves, custom software, guitar and analog electronics. It follows Harmonic Series 0 which was released on Table of the Elements. "Since I have always been involved with the inner structures of sound, working with the harmonic series comes as a natural move, since harmonics are well known to guitarists. Thus, inspired by Fourier's theory, I chose to work with the most basic element of sound synthesis, the sinewave. Harmonic Series is my first project using the computer as a musical instrument." -- Toral.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Sound Mind Sound Body
Label: MOIKAI
Format: CD
Price: $13.50
Catalog #: M07 CD
"Rafael Toral's music is guitar based, but doesn't seem to involve any of the usual guitar histrionics. Instead he focuses in on the little details, the expansion of the sustained note. Sound Mind Sound Body is indeed a sustained note; the music is not dissimilar to Fripp and Eno's classic extrapolations, to Toral's mentor (and former NYC landlord) Phil Niblock, or to other like-minded drone masters. What is special is its (for lack of a better word) tenderness and hands-off gentleness. For this reissue, Toral has restored some pieces that were edited from the original and remastered the whole bloody thing for maximum drone effect."


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space Solo 1
Label: QUECKSILBER (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $14.50
Catalog #: QUECK 011CD
This is Rafael Toral's 11th release, the first for the Quecksilber label, and another continuation of his "Space Program." After 15+ years of accomplished work on guitar and electronics, the Portuguese musician, producer and sound engineer announced that he was to embark on a long-term project, which was to be a multi-faceted work-in-progress representing his new approach to music. With the release of the first album of the program, the eponymous Space, he managed to disrupt the notions of avant-garde music, choosing to focus on "single sound events." The sounds are generated by self-devised electronic equipment set into action by the performance of gestures, by bodily action (take a look at the video samples of the "Space Study 1" on his web site, where he "plays" glove-controlled computer sinewaves). Thus, the music is created by individual decisions in real time -- just like in jazz, as Toral emphasizes. So basically, this is electronic music played with a jazz sensibility. Toral brings a performative aspect to electronic music that it often sorely lacks. The initial album Space is like a roadmap, accompanied by three distinct serieses: the performance series "Space Studies" (which started in 2004), and the record series "Space Elements" and "Solo Series." The latter are unaccompanied real-time solo recordings on one instrument only (as opposed to "Space Elements," where Toral collaborates with other musicians). The present CD is the first in that series and the second materialization of the program. Whereas Space featured an orchestral approach to composition (and thus a diversity of elements), Space Solo 1 presents the listener with music that is narrowed down almost to a point: everything is concentrated on a single element. The key feature of this music is that it was performed with a degree of skill, a commitment and a depth of exploration that could not be found on an orchestral record. On this album, Toral appears as a musician who simply plays an instrument on an individual, human and physical level. One cannot help but notice that Toral is opening up a new dimension in music -- and maybe also in language. Welcome to a new mode of expression.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Violence Of Discovery And Calm Of Acceptance
Label: STAUBGOLD (GERMANY)
Format: LP
Price: $12.50
Catalog #: STAUB 017LP
"The long awaited new album by this outstanding artist after his Aeriola Frequency CD from 1998 feat. 10 tracks recorded between 1993 and 2000 and comes in wonderful full-color sleeve designed by Jon Wozencroft. The CD version of this album is released by Touch (UK). Rafael Toral is a musician, producer and sound engineer. His work focuses mainly on the possibilities of ambient music (variable attention listening process), the electric guitar as a sound generator and improvisation with higher levels of risk (using instruments or systems that behave in unpredictable ways) in real time sonic exploration."


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space
Label: STAUBGOLD (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $14.50
Catalog #: STAUB 069CD
This is Rafael Toral's second full-length release for Staubgold. Space marks a radical change in Rafael Toral's music. After 15+ years of accomplished work on guitar and electronics, the Portuguese musician, producer and sound engineer found his way into a complete renovation of his music: "For a new endeavor I needed new information, and I discovered that the field of knowledge in music that I had most to learn from was jazz. There is a long line of connections and fusions between jazz and electronic music, and I envisioned that a step beyond would not be more jazz with electronics, but on electronics." In his emerging new conception of electronic music, Toral looks to the value of human performance while sharing values from jazz culture. Quoting longtime collaborator Sei Miguel, Toral's playing is "not composed, not improvised, and not a compromise between the two." In recent years, Rafael Toral has been developing and performing solo concerts on his instruments (modified or custom-built electronic devices) in a field of work he calls the "Space program." He slowly merged hours of live and studio recordings into "Space" (the program's first release), which is no less than a full orchestra of such instruments. The result suggests that the expression "space-jazz" was invented before the music it would describe best. The "Space program" is a vast and ambitious undertaking, featuring a two-paired series of record releases: Space Elements -- centering each volume on a certain instrument, while adding few others and featuring collaborations; and the Solo Series -- documenting solo performance on various instruments. The album Space belongs to neither of these, but is rather the "Space program's" fundamental release.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space Elements Vol. 1
Label: STAUBGOLD (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: STAUB 090CD
This is the third in Rafael Toral's Space Program series of releases -- his long-term research project launched in 2004, through which he has unearthed an innovative approach and a complete re-thinking of how electronic music is conceived and experienced. Using custom experimental instruments, Toral performs electronic music concerned with "phrasing and swing" and performing strange melodies with physicality, movement and gesture in flux. The result is something you're unlikely to have heard before, a kind of alien electronic jazz. After the acclaimed, orchestral Space and the follow-up Space Solo 1, this is the first volume of the Space Elements series, each release being focused on one kind of instrument, on small settings and including collaborations. Space Elements Vol. I features Rute Praça (cello), Margarida Garcia (electric double-bass), Sei Miguel's amazing percussionist César Burago, and David Toop (flute), besides a short appearance by Sei Miguel himself. From Toral's liner notes: "Having found that jazz is the field of musical knowledge where disciplined decision-making is most developed, this music is more informed by jazz than by any other. The Space Program emphasizes articulating silence and sound, by structuring musical discourse on experimental instruments with a simple and clear sonic identity. To my surprise, I found no historical precedents to this practice, being that it draws practically no information from electronic music history (which is grounded on different thinking patterns), and it draws very little from jazz history as well, since the instruments I use are inadequate to play any music based on the Western system. I regard this approach to jazz (meaning a system of individual decision-making from the standpoint of free-spectrum live electronics) as a new and exciting field of creative possibilities. I called it 'post-free jazz electronic music.'"


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space Elements Vol. II
Label: STAUBGOLD (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: STAUBDIG 005CD
Space Elements Vol. II is the fourth release in Rafael Toral's ongoing project, the Space Program. Following the first Elements release, this volume features a new set of collaborators: Evan Parker (soprano sax), Manuel Mota (guitar), Afonso Simões (drums), Stefano Tedesco (vibraphone), João Paulo Feliciano (Rhodes piano), and Ruben Costa (digital synthesizer), as well as returning guests Sei Miguel (trumpet), César Burago (percussion), Fala Mariam (trombone), and Rute Praça (cello). Space Elements Vol. II displays a melodic quality that, along with a refined management of silence, marks a new area and consolidates the Space Program's complex network. Its spaciousness is explained in Toral's liner notes: "While finding ways to make decisions on sound emission, it became evident to me that such sounds should have a reason to exist, they should be essential and necessary." Dan Warburton's writing in The Wire about Space fits Space Elements Vol. II perfectly: "The melodic logic that drives certain instruments within Space also recalls birdsong, with dense, convoluted runs of twittering melody ending in single piping notes, as spontaneous as Messiaen's birdsong transcriptions were painstaking and meticulous." Toral's music is a jazz-inspired re-evaluation of live electronics: "Despite working in a sound world that is cosmetically closer to R2D2's vocabulary than Louis Armstrong's or John Coltrane's, Toral has claimed a kinship to jazz because it models instant music making within a disciplined framework." (Bill Meyer, Dusted); "Toral is looking for nothing less than a totally fresh language to work in" (The Wire). Presented in a limited edition of 500 CDs.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space Elements Vol. III
Label: STAUBGOLD (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: STAUBDIG 012CD
This is the third volume of Rafael Toral's Space Program Space Elements series. In this series, each volume features guests and is focused on a compositional function. The Space Program is a long-term project launched in 2004 for performing music with a post-free jazz mind-set but using strange sounds from electronic instruments. Playing physically, the body is involved in making decisions. The Space Program is about articulating silence and sound, structuring musical flow on experimental instruments with a simple and clear sonic identity. "All these instruments are different but have a few things in common. The first is that they don't have a conventional interface, which means that for all of them I have to find out what they do and develop technique to play them," says Toral. "The second is that none of them respond accurately to performing action. So there's always a live tension between an accurate decision and its somewhat unpredictable outcome. I meant to play music technically free from any school and teachings, but beyond that, I also wanted the music somehow to escape my own self, playing instruments with a sort of life of their own, never allowing complete control and making any repetition virtually impossible." Dan Warburton's write-up in The Wire about Space fits Space Elements Vol. III perfectly: "The melodic logic that drives certain instruments within 'Space' also recalls birdsong, with dense, convoluted runs of twittering melody ending in single piping notes, as spontaneous as Messiaen's birdsong transcriptions were painstaking and meticulous." Toral's music is a jazz-inspired reevaluation of live electronics: "Despite working in a sound world that is cosmetically closer to R2D2's vocabulary than Louis Armstrong's or John Coltrane's, Toral has claimed a kinship to jazz because it models instant music-making within a disciplined framework." --Dusted Magazine; "Toral is looking for nothing less than a totally fresh language to work in" --The Wire. Mastered by James Plotkin. Featuring contributing musicians such as Afonso Simões (drums), Riccardo Dillon Wanke (Rhodes piano), César Burago (maracas, tamborim, shakers, cowbell, claves, kokiriko), Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion), Victor Gama (acrux), Marco Franco (drums), Toshio Kajiwara (lap steel guitar) and Toral (electrode oscillator, modified MS-2 pocket amplifier feedback, glove-controlled computer bass sinewaves, filtered feedback circuit, modified MT-10 portable amplifier, modulated noise, modulated synthesizer and tamtam).


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space
Label: TAIGA
Format: 2LP
Price: $20.00
Catalog #: TAIGA 001LP
Originally released on CD in 2006 by the Staubgold label, Taiga presents the deluxe 2LP version of Rafael Toral's Space, including one bonus track. This is a 2007 release from one of the most impressive new vinyl-only labels in the world. After over 15 years of drone and ambient work based around guitar and electronics, Rafael Toral has set off on a radically new mission. Leaving the guitar behind, Toral has equipped himself with instruments such as a Theremin-controlled white noise generator, amplified coil spring percussion, and a random pulse width modulation oscillator. With these, he has launched his jazz-fueled craft through Earth's atmosphere, into outer space. The resulting voyage is one where the sounds created recall the blast of a ray gun, the gurgle of a velociraptor, the rush of a primordial geyser, all seasoned with a vintage analog appeal and interspersed with meditative moments of silence. Toral's new approach to music, entitled the Space program, runs counter to his career thus far by focusing on performance instead of composition. The foundation and fundamental release of the program is Space. Using live and in-studio performances from 2004 and 2005, Toral designed Space as "an orchestral environment for electronic instruments." Following Space, the program continues with releases from the Space Solo series, documenting performances of individual instruments played unaccompanied, and the Space Elements series, featuring various collaborators while Toral focuses on a single piece of equipment. With previous releases by Toral on such respected labels as Touch, Table of the Elements and Ecstatic Peace, this exciting album by Toral is coincidentally Taiga's inaugural release as well as that of the Space program. It is presented here in a limited edition of 500 copies on direct-metal mastered 200 gram virgin vinyl. This version includes all of the original audio from the CD plus a previously-unreleased 17-minute vinyl-only bonus track, "Space Study 1.3," a live duet with percussionist César Burago. Packaged in a gatefold jacket designed by Helder Luís with spot metallic printing, the album boasts the Daniel Malhão photograph from the CD version expanded across the entire outside in UV gloss, an essay by Toral printed inside on reversed stock and the pockets flooded black.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space Solo 1
Label: TAIGA
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: TAIGA 002LP
Originally released on CD by Staubgold side-label Quecksilber in 2007, Space Solo 1 is Rafael Toral's second release in his ongoing Space Program, a venturesomely bold series of recordings. Internationally-acclaimed for his experimental drone and ambient guitar work, the Space Program is completely divergent from his past output. Equipped with handmade instruments, Toral's project is a performance-based discipline, which he calls "post-free jazz electronic music." Following the Space Program's inaugural release, Space, Space Solo 1 presents a raw exploration of a select few instruments Toral designed for the series. In contrast to Space, which consists of thoughtfully layered recordings from various live and studio performances, Space Solo 1 presents unaccompanied instruments traveling through unfamiliar territories where sounds exist in their singularity. The result grabs at the listener to stay alert, tiptoeing around silent moments, increasingly mounting tension and inspiring awe. As each instrument hints at a particular language belonging only to itself, Toral's masterful playing is revealed as an instinctual process. Space Solo 1 is 44 minutes of otherworldly splashing, ripping, beeping, hissing, etc. An indefinite number of sounds carefully coaxed from unique instruments, drawing a blurry line between ancestral and futuristic. Now available on LP through Taiga, this deluxe audiophile version was mastered direct to metal, pressed on 200 gram transparent red virgin vinyl and is presented in a limited edition of 500 copies. The jacket was cleanly designed by Helder Luís at No Type, featuring the Rui Toscano drawing from the CD version printed on reversed stock with a pantone red flood in the pocket.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space Elements Vol. I
Label: TAIGA
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: TAIGA 003LP
This is the third in Rafael Toral's Space Program series of releases -- his long-term research project launched in 2004, through which he has unearthed an innovative approach and a complete re-thinking of how electronic music is conceived and experienced. Using custom experimental instruments, Toral performs electronic music concerned with "phrasing and swing" and performing strange melodies with physicality, movement and gesture in flux. The result is something you're unlikely to have heard before, a kind of alien electronic jazz. After the acclaimed, orchestral Space and the follow-up Space Solo 1, this is the first volume of the Space Elements series, each release being focused on one kind of instrument, on small settings and including collaborations. Space Elements Vol. I features Rute Praça (cello), Margarida Garcia (electric double-bass), Sei Miguel's amazing percussionist César Burago, and David Toop (flute), besides a short appearance by Sei Miguel himself. From Toral's liner notes: "Having found that jazz is the field of musical knowledge where disciplined decision-making is most developed, this music is more informed by jazz than by any other. The Space Program emphasizes articulating silence and sound, by structuring musical discourse on experimental instruments with a simple and clear sonic identity. To my surprise, I found no historical precedents to this practice, being that it draws practically no information from electronic music history (which is grounded on different thinking patterns), and it draws very little from jazz history as well, since the instruments I use are inadequate to play any music based on the Western system. I regard this approach to jazz (meaning a system of individual decision-making from the standpoint of free-spectrum live electronics) as a new and exciting field of creative possibilities. I called it 'post-free jazz electronic music.'" Space Elements Vol. I was mastered direct to metal and pressed on clear 200 gram virgin vinyl in a limited edition of 500 copies. The jacket was designed by Helder Luís at No Type and features a collage by contemporary artist João Paulo Feliciano.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space Elements Vol. II
Label: TAIGA
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: TAIGA 010LP
Space Elements Vol. II is the fourth release in Rafael Toral's ongoing project, the Space Program. Following the first Elements release, this volume features a new set of collaborators: Evan Parker (soprano sax), Manuel Mota (guitar), Afonso Simões (drums), Stefano Tedesco (vibraphone), João Paulo Feliciano (Rhodes piano), and Ruben Costa (digital synthesizer), as well as returning guests Sei Miguel (trumpet), César Burago (percussion), Fala Mariam (trombone), and Rute Praça (cello). Space Elements Vol. II displays a melodic quality that, along with a refined management of silence, marks a new area and consolidates the Space Program's complex network. Its spaciousness is explained in Toral's liner notes: "While finding ways to make decisions on sound emission, it became evident to me that such sounds should have a reason to exist, they should be essential and necessary." Dan Warburton's writing in The Wire about Space fits Space Elements Vol. II perfectly: "The melodic logic that drives certain instruments within Space also recalls birdsong, with dense, convoluted runs of twittering melody ending in single piping notes, as spontaneous as Messiaen's birdsong transcriptions were painstaking and meticulous." Toral's music is a jazz-inspired re-evaluation of live electronics: "Despite working in a sound world that is cosmetically closer to R2D2's vocabulary than Louis Armstrong's or John Coltrane's, Toral has claimed a kinship to jazz because it models instant music making within a disciplined framework." (Bill Meyer, Dusted); "Toral is looking for nothing less than a totally fresh language to work in" (The Wire). Space Elements Vol. II was mastered direct to metal from 24-bit files and pressed on clear 200 gram virgin-vinyl. With design by Helder Luis at NOTYPE, the LP features a collage by João Paulo Feliciano. Presented in a limited edition of 500. CD version available on Staubgold.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Space Elements Vol. III
Label: TAIGA
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: TAIGA 016LP
According to Rafael Toral, the Space Program is all about a simple idea: to perform abstract electronic music under jazz values. The result is full of fascinating paradoxes: "melodic without notes, rhythmic without a beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free." Taiga now releases its most eloquent example so far: "Space Elements Vol. III is the strongest and musically most diverse statement within Rafael Toral's Space Program to date. You will experience "jazz on electronics" in full effect -- a totally new language in sound." --Staubgold; With blooming sound, compliments of the mastering by James Plotkin (not found on previous releases in the Space Program), Space Elements Vol. III has a very rhythmic, percussive character. It unfolds a fresh set of collaborations with an array of drummers and percussionists, while Toral's electronic phrasing reaches previously-unheard heights of maturity. Edition of 500 LPs featuring João Paulo Feliciano's artwork and graphic design by NOTYPE. Pressed on 200 gram plasma virgin vinyl, the LP was cut with DMM.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Cyclorama Lift 3
Label: TOMLAB (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $10.00
Catalog #: TOM 007CD
21-minute piece, mid-price CD release. In a similar style and from the same sessions as the Aeriola Frequency CD on Perdition Plastics. "Cyclorama Lift is a piece aobut the idea that electronic resonance is everywhere in our electronically mediated perception of sounds. Like a ghost-in-the-machine. It's performed with an empty circuit, basically a feedback loop using as main instruments two 8-second delays and a 4-band parametric equalizer. There's no input, the loop is constantly nourishing and digesting itself. The circulating sound is electronic resonance."


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Early Works
Label: TOMLAB (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $13.00
Catalog #: TOM 019CD
"Having completed Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance, I found myself drawing a continuous line going back in time some 15 years. These early pieces are at the other end of that line. At the time of recording them, I was far from dreaming I would ever release records at all. I found them of little value then, but under the light of all my following works, from 'Sound Mind Sound Body' through 'Wave Field' and 'Cyclorama Lift' to 'Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance', they stand out as having paved the way for all this music." --Rafael Toral, December 2001


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Violence Of Discovery And Calm Of Acceptance
Label: TOUCH (UK)
Format: CD
Price: $14.50
Catalog #: TO 048CD
2010 reissue. Originally released by Touch in 2001 (and on vinyl via Staubgold). Considered by the Chicago Reader to be "one of the most gifted and innovative guitarists of the decade," Rafael Toral has developed a unique sound world, having been as influenced by Alvin Lucier and Brian Eno as by Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. Using the guitar as part of a complex electronic instrument, Toral has collaborated with Jim O'Rourke, John Zorn, Sonic Youth, Rhys Chatham and Phill Niblock and played in many European countries. He's also a member of MIMEO, the electronic orchestra featuring Keith Rowe, Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg, Kaffe Matthews, and many others. Violence Of Discovery And Calm Of Acceptance is a collection of ten small pieces crafted by Toral with extreme precision and care through the last 7 years. Using guitars and analog technology, it can be described as Toral's best work, embodying all the directions he explored in his previous critically-acclaimed records, Sound Mind Sound Body, Wave Field and Aeriola Frequency but taking them into new dimensions. The highly evocative, intricate and subtle guitar drones are captured in the beautiful photography of Heitor Alvelos, a Portuguese artist, and in the artwork of Jon Wozencroft. The background noise on track 10 is a recording of silence during a Space Shuttle mission real-time webcast. All other sounds were made by electric guitars. The album was recorded between 1993 and 2000 and mastered at Noise Precision, Lisbon.


Artist: TORAL, RAFAEL
Title: Engine 03_04_02
Label: TOUCH (UK)
Format: CD
Price: $11.00
Catalog #: TO CDR4
Fourth release in this limited series on Touch (as with the previous Fennesz CD, this is not actually a CDR, but a regular pressed CD). Recorded live at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. "'Engine' is a piece for two guitars, one bass, twin modulated feedback circuits, motorized strings, analog modular system, routing audio mixer and several other devices. It's performed simultaneously on two channels."

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