Toral, Rafael

Space Elements Vol. II

Label: Staubgold Country: Germany

"Space Elements Vol. II is the fourth release in Rafael Toral's ongoing project, the Space Program. Following the first Elements release, this volume features a new set of collaborators and displays a melodic quality that, along with a refined management of silence, marks a new area and consolidates the Space Program's complex network. Its spaciousness is explained in Toral's liner notes: "While finding ways to make decisions on sound emission, it became evident to me that such sounds should have a reason to exist, they should be essential and necessary."

Dan Warburton's writing in The Wire about Space fits Space Elements Vol. II perfectly: "The melodic logic that drives certain instruments within Space also recalls birdsong, with dense, convoluted runs of twittering melody ending in single piping notes, as spontaneous as Messiaen's birdsong transcriptions were painstaking and meticulous."

Toral's music is a jazz-inspired re-evaluation of live electronics: "Despite working in a sound world that is cosmetically closer to R2D2's vocabulary than Louis Armstrong's or John Coltrane's, Toral has claimed a kinship to jazz because it models instant music making within a disciplined framework."-(Bill Meyer, Dusted); "Toral is looking for nothing less than a totally fresh language to work in" (The Wire)."-Staubgold