PRICE:
$15.50
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
El Espacio Entre
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
GB 132CD GB 132CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
1/20/2023

Acclaimed producer (Rosalia, Lina_Raul Refree) and in-demand collaborator (Lee Ranaldo, Richard Youngs) Raul Refree returns with his second solo album for tak:til/glitterbeat. A kaleidoscopic but seamless mashup of soundtrack music, post-classical meditations, Iberian traditional elements and experimental strategies. The title, El Espacio Entre (The Space Between), alludes to its spatial, temporal, and conceptual in betweenness. The concept for the album emerged from his soundtrack for the restored early Spanish cinema masterpiece The Cursed Village (Florián Rey, 1930). Refree adheres to total creative freedom. Some pieces like "Lamentos De Un Rescate" and "La Plage" represent his first attempt at re-composition. Refree took Monteverdi's madrigal "Lamento Della Ninfa" and personally directed the performance. El Espacio Entre is a unified whole without centerpieces. Each piece functions like a specific image or disposition translated into sound. The short evocative song titles provide interesting interpretative angles. They capture the introspective nature of Refree's musical expression, which is not preoccupied with epic arrangements or grand musical ideas. Refree's approach to improvisation, composition, and production resonates with the tenets of imagist poetry. The piano sequence in "Las Migraciones Nocturnas" is unedited. It's not played on a click. The short and sweet "Lamentos De Un Día Cualquiera," a modern reimagining of baroque vocals accompanied by a processed viola da gamba and lute, beautifully captures his philosophy. Certain elements simply must be included, though, like the evanescent trumpet line in "La Plage." Recomposed madrigals coexist with hectic piano explorations ("Montañas Vacías," "Montañas Vacías II"). "La Radio En La Cocina," a pensive dialogue between lute, radio static, piano, and marimba, gradually mutates into a post-rock crescendo. The immersive piece for prepared piano "Todo El Mundo Quiere Irse Ya" suddenly transitions into the The Durutti Column-inspired guitar sketch "Casc I Pluja." It is the way he approaches rhythm, timbre, dynamics, and texture that imbues his music with a sense of intimacy. His guitar meditations ("Amanece Sin Que Nadie Lo Vea," "Lo Que Esconden") bring to mind the music of Raphael Rogiński. In "Las Migraciones Nocturnas," a Jon Brion-style soundtrack piece that disintegrates into agitated strings wailing, one can hear the echoes of his music for films. A similarly cinematic atmosphere is conjured in the composition "No Es Tan Fácil Aquí." Yet the most surprising moment on the record arises in the epilogue "Una Nueva Religión" in which a mellow organ motif unexpectedly intertwines with Darkthrone-inspired metal blast beats. El Espacio Entre is a sonic diary that may lead you to transformational events while riding the bus, train or plane, being in transit between one destination or another, the current and next version of you.