Murcof
Cosmos
Leaf
Music is more often than not, an accompaniment to life rather than life itself. Unlike cinema, music is rarely given our full attention and is what we enjoy while doing something else. Putting your foot down on the open road is made all the more special with Free Bird in your ears or making sweet love to a beautiful woman is made even sweeter if you stick on the new Jamie Foxx LP, but I can't think of a single thing that would or should accompany anything by the mexican electronic maestro Murcof. His work is so subtle that even breathing would serve as a distraction. Since his debut master stroke Martes, Fernando Corona has painstakingly crafted the most emotive and complex electronic constructions and with this his 3rd record he still seems to stand alone in his field.
Less is more with this guy as he erects vast, cavernous soundscapes that surround and envelope you. The infinite emptiness of his sound becomes your world and then, as he drops a pin close to your ear, all your senses stand to attention and you enter a whole new listening experience. He nurtures his rhythms out of the slightest and most delicate sounds, the crackle of vinyl seems like background warmth but soon evolves into beat, accompanied by feint bleeps it tip toes over broad swathes of strings and deep blue percussion. Martes was his masterpiece indeed - a near perfect album it was like listening to the purest maths. It featured expertly sampled classical arrangements that were refracted and sliced with stunning accuracy. The follow up, Rememberanza, was a similar affair. Textural groundwork was painstakingly laid out before us as almost non existent beats were coaxed from what sounded like an orchestra of marching insects. The difference here was the minimal dependance on sampled music as Fernando Corona composed his own string arrangements and the same is seen here on his latest composition Cosmos.
With the opening Cuero Celeste and the following Cielo we see things continue on from where Corona left us 5 years ago. But then with Cosmos 1 things take a drastic turn and Murcof never looks back again. His work has always claimed to describe the physical landscape of his homeland Mexico but from this point on it's clear that a grander intention is being adopted. As the beats fade away in favour of brooding strings the listener takes a gulp as a sound so awesome rises from the dust. This is no longer the depiction of rolling Mexican vistas but the soundtrack to the birth of planets. At an average running time of 9 minutes each the next 4 tracks evolve slowly but surely into compositions of such magnitude that if you've taken my earlier advice of giving this your undivided attention you may want to be careful that you're not buried under this ever rising mass.
It's a daring and focused departure for this musician. He is definitely a man with his eye on his art and this is another uncompromising album. His recent work with film scores is showing its worth here as he moves his music way beyond mere songs into something more ethereal. Since 2004's Utopia EP this was always the direction Corona was heading and Cosmos is an impressive end result but in this grandeur I can't help longing for the delicate crackle of his insect orchestra from days of old and Cosmos does away with this all too swiftly for my liking as if the artist can't wait to move on to bigger plains. You can hardly criticize a musician for this but his earlier sound was so special this new world will take a lot of getting used to.
Links
Tags
2nd Nov 2007 - Tumblr
3