CD: Santiago Latorre - Ecliptíca

There's a whole world of music out there that floats in the zone somewhere between jazz, club music, sound art, contemporary classical and meditative new age background sound – so much of it that it all too easily blurs together. But there are artists who can make something more, and when you stumble on something truly individualistic like this album it shines out like a beacon in the fog.

Like Santiago Latorre's first album, Órbita, but more expansive, this passes breathy saxophone sounds, voices singing in Spanish and Taiwan Chinese, field recordings, rhythm tracks and more through digital processes to create richly layered shifting textures that envelop and surround the listener, refusing to give a single point of focus and forcing you to give yourself up to it.

This album was begun in collaboration with a Barcelona observatory, and it is so easy to picture clear night skies when listening to it. Even more than Órbita, it is untethered from recognisable stylistic tics, and every sound – musical or abstract – works in the service of a grand, contemplative vision. Whether it's the gentle ambient piano ballad “半個月亮”, the steadily building strings and church organs of “E6” or the distant clatter of “E2”, everything is focused not on dry academic rigour nor on sloppy emoting, but on the creation of something that is quite simply very, very beautiful. Like a dream you find yourself barely waking from before comfortably slipping back into, this is an album you will stick on repeat.

 

Santiago Latorre - Ecliptica - live samples from Santiago Latorre on Vimeo.