I couldn’t produce reasons, but over the last years the stern attractiveness of cultivated disturbance has allowed this reviewer to keep his focus even in the toughest circumstances. Perhaps this is due to the implicit frugality distinguishing the finest works by the top names inhabiting this neighborhood, which definitely include Francisco Meirino and Miguel Angel García. Nonmenabsorbium presents five tracks of indisputable intensity, a sharp reminder of the unequaled concordance born from an intelligent placement of sounds that nourish awareness in spite of unwelcoming features.
Having looked at the sources (no-input mixer, modular synthesizer, field recordings and magnetic fields) one is already confident in being connected to the sort of physical phenomena that, depending on personal predisposition, can extinguish sorrow or brutalize serenity. Each piece is outlined by a biotic radicalness of sorts; they all alternate cycles of unfriendly stasis with the unsettling menace of sonic events implying a journey across various states of paroxysm. The music’s density changes frequently, still leaving us sensible about the constant evolution occurring inside its structures. Rather than escaping from malevolence we reach a sense of intimacy with the harsh, as if Meirino and García were coldly showing us a way towards ultimate composure through the mercilessness of apparent incompatibility.
After listening to such a record (while also revisiting one of the sacred texts, namely Douglas Kahn’s Earth Sound Earth Signal) a tendency arises every time to regard our position here as that of a mere receiving-and-transmitting entity. Human interference may attempt to sabotage the communication, but once the brain has been tuned to the deprivation of cheap needs there’s no stopping the quest for the next stage of non-belonging.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 