A nocturne is a musical composition based on the atmosphere of the night. The Irish composer John Field (1782-1837) was the first who wrote this kind of music and is known as the founder of the style. The Spanish ambient artist Max Corbacho steps in his footsteps. Photographs of the night inspired him for this … Read more
Between night reenactments and organic lifting. Playing exactly the «night» feeling is a very difficult maneuver in music. Unlike other arts such as literature, poetry or cinema, where the reference is precise and specified by the image projected by the text or the screen, there is a lack of equivalent neural transport in music. Night, … Read more
The panoramic landscape photographs adorning Max Corbacho’s Nocturnes serve a purpose that goes beyond mere decoration. In this case, the images, captured by the artist himself, are intended to reflect the emotions he felt and the impressions gathered during many recent sessions of night photography; in his own words, «The most vivid memory of these … Read more
«Nocturnes» (the debut release on Max’s own label Silentsun, created exclusively for his solo albums from now on) is the first episode of a trilogy with night landscapes as a theme. The long hours lived on many night-time excursions and capturing the places visited in great photos (see the albums nice cover art), inspired the … Read more
Max Corbacho’s long been something of Spain’s answer to Steve Roach, and this, his latest, doesn’t mitigate that comparison nor does it disappoint. «Nocturnes» is every bit the stellar cousin to many of Roach’s own escapades, particularly «Structures from Silence», which this expertly mirrors in every capacity, nowhere more so than on the epic, 52-minute-plus … Read more
May 2017Smooth, drifting ambient electronica.Nocturnes sees Spanish ambient master Max Corbacho delivering some of his most silken, airy ambient fabric to date along with some uneasy dark shrouds that lift and curl in the unseen slow-motion currents of the night. The enormous opener wafts by in delicate filaments of sound, overlaid one upon another, … Read more
The wonderful thing about ambient music is that it’s a pure distillation of an aesthetic (not A E S T H E T I C, at least not just that). Instead of making music that reminds you of glimmering airports or lazy Thursday afternoons or an earthy old chapel, ambient music sounds like those … Read more
There’s something incredibly ethereal about this album. Max Corbacho is brilliant at evoking reverence, space and a feeling of… well… the cosmos. Much of his work seems, bright, icy & celestial. Ars Lucis has a vast sense of space within it. Inspired by cathedrals and the way light pours in through coloured windows, Corbacho spaces … Read more
As stated on Max’s official website, «frozen architecture music» suits this album perfectly. At first, I thought the album sounded very one-note. After many listens, this is certainly not the case. The listener has to focus in on all of the tiny elements that Max uses in his musical palette in order to gain a … Read more
«Simply Gorgeous» by Endoflogic From the artists’ website: «Like a weightless dream, the main theme is exposed in Light-Matrix Portal, where a gentle swirl of chords leads us, as a Gothic doorway, into a magnificent space. The main theme remains on all the pieces in a subtle way, spreading mystical, delicate scents through labyrinthine passages … Read more