The Squid's Ear
Writing about unusual and experimental music,
following the activities of Squidco...
  •  •  •     Join Our Mailing List!



The Squid's Ear
Facebook: Squidco Sales

Heard In

Reviews of artist releases:
cd's, books, magazines, &c.


  Luis Lopes 
  Love Song: Post Ruins
  (Shhpuma) 


  
   review by Nick Ostrum
  2019-10-28
Luis Lopes: Love Song: Post Ruins (Shhpuma)

Lopes instructs in the liner notes to experience Love Song: Post-Ruins "alone somewhere between after 1 o'clock in the morning and 1 hour before sunrise." These are, of course, the darkest and loneliest hours when the social bustling of the day have waned, most of the world has gone to bed, and those who are left are forced to face solitude. This album, per Lopes, can be your guide.

Love Song is also an intimate album. With its meticulous development, fractured lyricism, and vulnerability, I am even tempted to call its single track a ballad, shorn of saccharine adornments and the typical verse chorus song-structure. This is the kind of ballad a musician might fortuitously happen upon only once, when navigating the doldrums of love, in that space between the hopeful surrender of oneself to the object infatuation and the despair that accompanies the realization that such surrender might not be enough. This is also raw music. It shifts between dark, abstract blues licks and contemporary explorations in resonance and sparsity. At times, it is airy and, maybe at its most exposed moments, even optimistic. At others, it bounds on hopelessness, only to partially reopen to the possibility of requited sentiments.

In that sense, this is a difficult album. It is a vast departure from Lopes' more aggressive free rock shredding and heavy sonic manipulations-upon-manipulations that have rightfully garnered praise. (His recent collaboration with Julien Desprez, Boa Tarde, comes most immediately to mind.) It also rings with a deep sincerity and emotional outpouring that, for all of its reserve and spaciousness, seems unencumbered. It hurts at points. It confuses at others. And it never offers the reconciliation that the listener simultaneously seeks but avoids, knowing it would eviscerate the song of its potency. There seems no message here beyond one person's struggle with the eternal and inescapable cyclicality of love, hope, and loss.

It is rare that avant-garde guitar music moves me like this. Given Lopes' first Love Songs release in 2016, I should not be surprised. That said, the Love Song: Post Ruins abandons the search for post-rock melodicism that balanced Love Songs' lonely angularity and is that much more effective because of it. The music is mournful and moving. It entrances. It distorts time and wrenches hearts. Or, as its release page phrases it, it expresses "an eternalized moment, full of emotions, necessarily limited by the musical performance, but infinite 'in itself'". Love Song: Post Ruins is indeed a unique artifact, in part because of this phenomenological protraction of time, emotion, and meaning. For a composition so glacial in development and played simply by a man and his electric guitar, this music has surprising depth. And, it lingers long after the last note fades.



Luis Lopes: Love Song: Post Ruins
Is Sold at Squidco!
Squidco




Comments and Feedback:



The Squid's Ear presents
reviews about releases
sold at Squidco.com
written by
independent writers.

Squidco

Recent Selections @ Squidco:


Berlin Art Quartet (
Schubert /
Bauer /
Muller /
Bruggemann):
Live At MIM
(Unisono Records)



Jimmy Lyons:
Rivbea Live! Series,
Volume 3
(NoBusiness)



Erik Klinga:
Elusive Shimmer
(thanatosis produktion)



Das B (
Mazen Kerbaj /
Mike Majkowski /
Magda Mayas /
Tony Buck):
Love
(thanatosis produktion /
Corbett Vs Dempsey)



Brass Clouds:
Escape Vessels
(Bathysphere Records)



Fire! Orchestra:
Echoes
[2 CDs]
(Rune Grammofon)



Sophie Agnel /
John Edwards /
Steve Noble:
Three On A Match
(Otoroku)



Satoko Fujii
This is It! (
w/
Natsuki Tamura /
Takashi Itani):
Message
(Libra)



Sorry For Laughing (
G. Whitlow /
M. Bates /
Dave-Id /
E. Ka-Spel):
Rain Flowers
[2 CDS]
(Klanggalerie)



New Origin (
feat. Christoph Rocher /
Joe Fonda /
Harvey Sorge):
The Poet Walks
(Listen! Foundation (
Fundacja Sluchaj!))



Simon Nabatov:
Agree to Disagree
(Listen! Foundation (
Fundacja Sluchaj!))



Von Schlippenbach, Alexander /
Barry Altschul Quartet w/
Joe Fonda &
Rudi Mahal:
Free Flow
[2 CDs]
(Listen! Foundation (
Fundacja Sluchaj!))



Thelonious Monk with
Sonny Rollins:
1953 To 1957
Revisited
(ezz-thetics by
Hat Hut Records
Ltd)



Daniel Carter /
Ayumi Ishito /
George Draguns /
Ed Wilcox:
Makeshift Spirituals
(577 Records)



Kory Reeder:
Homestead
(Another Timbre)



John Cage:
Chamber Works 1943-1951
(Another Timbre)



Josh Sinton:
Couloir &
Book Of Practitioners
Vol. 2
Book "W"
[2 CDs]
(FiP recordings)



Elliott Sharp /
Scott Fields:
Reimsi Geara
(Relative Pitch)



KnCurrent (
Brennan /
Cooper-Moore /
Davis /
Hwang):
KnCurrent
(Deep Dish)



Biota:
Measured Not Found
(Recommended Records)







Squidco
Click here to
advertise with
The Squid's Ear






The Squid's Ear pays its writers.
Interested in becoming a reviewer?




The Squid's Ear is the companion magazine to the online music shop Squidco !


  Copyright © Squidco. All rights reserved. Trademarks. (36556)