Can listen here.
A record with Rafael Toral. What more I need to say? It's simple: just like in cooking with the right ingredients and an experienced hand the result can only be tasty.
And that is precisely the result of this duo. Tasty!
Sensitive to what the other feels, mindful of what moves them. Two distinct realities that intersect and form one.
Hilmar Jensson was a stranger to me until I heard this record. And that's how I started my discovery of his musical world. An Icelandic with a warm and patterned sound. A guitar that transports us to the electronic space of Rafael Toral.
A single track. Forty-six minutes and forty-six seconds of abstraction. On a day when the clouds hid the sun, in which the hustle and bustle of those who pass by us bother our the inner peace, nothing like listening the record and disconnect from our reality. Let us take ourselves to other places, other realities, other scenarios. And in this, Toral is master. He is the master of many of my journeys both mentally and on paper. The ease of taking me to the space without needing special clothes and then being in the Amazon rainforest is so great that satisfies the electrical stimulus of the brain.
I flow between the rational and cerebral and the emotional and inexplicable.
Once again I found myself asking: "But where have I been that I have failed to go to a series of concerts in Lisbon that would fill me with good energy."
This record is to have and listen to, but the charm must be even bigger if we see the duo performing live. I like it. More than a good record I like not to be disappointed when I listen to the projects live. And a good live recording has these things, brings with it a regret of not having been present in that moment.
I am extremely sensitive to certain high frequencies and therefore mine, so spoken in other texts, difficult to deal with certain wind instruments, and in this record there is a moment that awoke that little moment of shiver in me. It is not a shiver that feels well but when it happens I have perfect notion that the problem is me and this my fragility at certain frequencies. Not that it causes me pain but awakens in me a certain animosity towards sound. I decided to go see what passage that is and it only lasts two seconds. I am training the ear to better deal with high frequencies and I now react better to it.
And when I realized the end of the record was approaching too fast.
An intense journey between the rational and the spiritual, between space and Earth, in a game of perceptions that sharpens our senses and makes us want to be part of this vast universe that was created between Portugal and Iceland.