Electronic
music is now a truly global lingua franca. Its saturated
reach, however, has the all too frequent tendency to
make its sources anonymous, as evidenced by Mille Plateaux’s
Clicks & Cuts compilations. In opposition
stand the likes of Iceland’s Múm
and Mexico’s Murcof who have developed unique
voices that are difficult to separate from the countries
that nurtured them. Murcof’s music has a very
strong sense of place, of a landscape where mountains
meet plains and sun-bleached towns hover in the haze
of afternoon heat. Its depth, clarity and sense of contemplativeness
evoke the calm stillness of Vermeer’s interiors.
If the Dutch artist had painted the Mexican countryside
with sound, perhaps the result would have been similar
to this music.
Remembranza travels along the path established
by its predecessors, Martes
and last year’s Utopia
(a compilation of remixes and new tracks). The music,
marked by a brooding stateliness, convincingly marries
electronic elements and carefully applied orchestral
tones. There’s a sense of delicacy and detail
in Murcof’s approach that saves it from descending
into rarefied archness. No stealing up out of silence
this time. Recuerdos establishes its dense
atmosphere without preamble. The trademark brush of
burnished strings is intermittently audible, but there’s
a lot of other activity, a variety of presences that
gradually layer themselves into a resonant well of dark
hues... the veiled tones of piano and violin appearing
like points of light that only serve to deepen the shadows
that surround them.
Titles like Remembranza and Recuerdos
point to a focus upon the past. Judging by the tone
of the music, the memories are not happy ones. There’s
a sombre mournfulness that suggests deep hurt and painful,
reluctant acceptance. The syncopated clatters that are
interspersed throughout the first track suggest the
marshal assembling of rifles (this particular association
is triggered by its similarity to a rhythm figure used
by Photek on The Hidden Camera). It is interesting
to see Murcof declare, in a milkfactory interview undertaken
at the time of Martes’
release, that ‘there is no political motivation
behind my music, it’s just music and what I can
do with it’. I wonder whether the emotional foundations
of this music are deeper now, they certainly sound as
if they are. Even if that’s not the case, Remembranza
serves as a resonant screen upon which it is possible
to project one’s own feelings and memories.
Colin Buttimer
4/5 |
