Francisco López’s output is a challenging subject to discuss without the “heard-a-million-times” humdrum and, more crucially, eschewing the most blatant clichés. Especially when dealing with an installation’s purely aural content, as in this instance.
The realm of installations – or so-called sonic sculptures for that matter – has for decades now given undeserved room to frauds who abuse the trust of common people searching for the “new”. Mercifully, López usually avoids blending into this crowd, prioritizing settings that best complement the environmental, acousmatic, and ultimately internal magnitude of his distinctive works. And if, as should always be the case, sound represents an unwavering guide through the ramblings of the conscious and subconscious, you can be certain that, when listening to López’s creations, something that leaves a lasting impression on both ears and psyche will be present.
The five-movement Dynamo, the origins of which can be learned simply by visiting the release page, is no exception. Via the skillful manipulation and organization of sonorities mostly from the concrete world, it leads across a sequence of environments whose multi-spatiality encompasses reverberations of mutating dynamics and frequencies that, rather than the auricular membranes, are detectable by the innermost vibrating marrow. In that regard, “Iteration 3” effectively symbolizes López’s insight with an awe-inspiring coalescence of subsonic shaking and printing press-like reiterative pulsation. While giving access to an ineffable sphere of transcendence, it also warrants the chance to experience the heat produced by a massive machine whose inner workings remain a mystery.
In the end, one still must return to the suffocating miasma of all that is cheaply human. But we are, at least, temporarily relieved of the weight of convictions that would otherwise be disastrous. For somebody else.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 