The reproduction after the fact online of live electronic music events often feels like the opposite of Plato’s cave. We mere MP3 listeners are lingering outside the cave, and inside there’s what seems to be some crazy laser-light show being projected onto the ceiling. All we get, however, is a muted audio recording. Case in point, the disparate, slinky, low-key phrases of Xesús Valle‘s live Sónar 2011 set, which was made availale for download as the 85th entry in the great Crónica podcast, at cronicaelectronica.org. It was recorded during Valle’s performance in Barcelona at Sónar. The brief liner notes lists, in a description of his process, “granular synthesis, analog synthesis and raw field recordings” as the constituent parts of his work. There are footsteps, and woozy synthesizers, and B-movie horror noises, and delicate crossfades (MP3). There is a sense of narrative to the progression, but one that never, perhaps intentionally, lets the listener ever forget that he, or she, is in the dark.
Track originally posted at cronicaelectronica.org. More on Valle at alg-label.com.