Morpheus Music & The Mall Magazine

STYLE

Expansive beatless spacey ambience created by the establishing of immense translucent zones of overlapping tonal masses. These swelling multiple layers are lustrous and dense like massive backlit clouds drifting in darkness. A warmth breathes into some pieces, still panoramic and open, but with waves and undulations of harmony and serenity. In other places the sound drops away into unfathomable depths where fractal lights play lazily on the surface of the abyss. The density of the music almost impenetrable at times – suggestive of enormity and endlessness. Amnios contains whispering voices, echoing sussurations, a hint of humanity adrift on meandering tides. Ruby For The Sun builds on a rumbling weight of sound, the glisten and shimmer of gossamer membranes unfolding their colour above – electronic washes bathing everything in gliding radiance. Cellular Memory contains near percussive flashes of white noise and trickles of glassy synthesiser, liquid clear amid the oceanic swell and pull of steady drones – the track fading almost imperceptibly, slowly, off into infinite distance …

MOOD

The Talisman engenders a definite sense of awe and wonder – a feeling of universal enormity pervades the whole album shot through with delicate filaments of light and colour. In general the mood is one of ponderous, harmonious drama, the occasional dissonant tones and grumbling clouds usually brightened by shifting unseen luminaries. Rather like a series of aural nebulae – each track has its own distinct personality but all clearly share a common structural nature.

ARTWORK

The imagery on this album is very beautiful – fractal swirls and organic loops and skins laid out one on top of another – all in luscious hues of green, olive and pale yellow. The designs were apparently created using Apophysis 2.04 beta – a neat piece of software ideally suited to producing abstract graphics. Subtle olive lettering disturbs the visual impact as little as possible – tidy and tasteful. Internal panels make use of black and white versions of similar images – with an explanation of the project, recording details and contact information laid out in a simple white font.

OVERALL

Max Corbacho seems to be growing in stature with each release – this is a very ambitious sound presented with a high degree of polish and attention to detail. There are eleven compositions on the album, each created sometime between 2004 and 2006. Max’s promotional material explains that «most of these songs were composed during various, long, deep meditative improvisation sessions». Equipment used for the project included «my beloved Korg Triton & Korg Z1, and sound processing outboard expansion units such Reverbs and Delays, as well some other esoteric gear». The results are timeless, placeless, progression free infusions of harmony, floating as if suspended in the vastness of eternity. The Talisman is released via ad21 Music – a label set up in 1998 by Max and fellow musician Bruno Sanfilippo to showcase their own ambient and contemporary electronic music releases.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM

If you like Steve Roach’s work, The Talisman might well be right up your street. Professionally produced ambient grandeur – free of beats and melodies, but thick with tenebrous drones and glowing textural density.

Ambient Soundscapes from Spain: an interview with Max Corbacho

Max, what were your first steps in music…. how did you get involved in electronic music?

During a long time, my first favorite groups were the big dinosaurs of the symphonic rock, Pink Floyd, Yes, Kansas, Genesis… and kindred bands. Besides, I felt a growing need to do this music myself. I bought my first instrument in those days, a Spanish guitar, which was followed by an acoustic guitar and then an electric one. For some years I played the electric guitar in several rock bands. Little by little, my love for the guitar began to calm down as my interest moved to other types of music, especially the ancient music, baroque in particular. I also began to listen to the classic artists of EM such as Vangelis, Tangerine Dream and some Americans like Richard Burmer. One night as I was visiting the house of a couple of friends, I found a cd with a beautiful photography of the American desert among their discs. I’d always liked those places, I usually visit them in Spain. I played the disc and in seconds I felt like «this is what I’ve always looked for and I’ve just found it». That was the first time I heard the music Steve Roach, Michael Stearns and Kevin Braheny and the cd «Desert Solitaire». To me it was my start in the electronic music…

How would you describe your music? Some called you «the Spanish Steve Roach» after they heard you first album….

I think that my music rises out of a desire to recreate what happens in nature, the endless source of visual and sonic richness. I try to figure out the mystery that makes us admire the beauty of natural surroundings, its simplicity, mystery of repetition etc.

I try «to amplify» the sounds, the textures of natural environments in the space and in the imagination, to discover zones that though they exist, they are not evident at first.

Thus, I don’t try to imitate real sound landscapes, my intention is rather to produce events, textures and phrases that are analogous in the richness of possibilities and variety of shades. I also intend to transmit that organic richness, the same emotion, reverence and passion that I feel for life, the world, the people…

Yes, some people call me the Spanish Steve Roach, but I honestly believe that Roach’s quality is so big and unique, of such impact in the music of our days, that any comparison is useless. His influence is evident in my music and in that of thousands of artists in the whole world. I hope to continue learning from him for many more years.

Can you tell us something about each of you albums, how they were made, what concepts you had in mind…

I made my debut «Vestiges», with few resources but a lot of patience. As a declaration of principles, I formed my musical direction with it: atmospheric environmental sounds with driving electronic percussion.

It was privately produced and stayed unnoticed for more than a year, until Cliff Tuell (Steve Roach’s webmaster) accidentally entered my web site and listened to the audio clips. From there on, and due to the positive comments of fans in the US I began selling my cds. My second album, «Far Beyond The Immobile Point», was an attempt to find another occult face of my music. It would have been easier to do compose another «Vestiges», which would have sold even better for sure, but I decided the new album should be something completely different. «Far Beyond … » was inspired by the first chapter of Umberto Eco’s novel «Foucault’s Pendulum». Eco’s poetical vision of the universe presented in his work inspired me to do a much more introspective and contemplative work. The music breaths far more abstraction and the lack of rhythm and percussion reinforced my vision of remoteness in the universe.

With «The Resonant Memory of Earth», I returned to the basics of «Vestiges». My passion for natural, desolate and remote places always inspired me. With a succession of quiet sounds and harmonies I recreated my feelings on these environments. It was a very emotive work for me, it coincided with a journey to the Sahara desert in Morocco where I explored the corners of my mind in search of answers.

«Nocturnal Emanations» was a new exploration of dark and desolate territories. Here, the magic mutation of the natural forms inspired my synthesizer grooves and sequences It was a new form of composition that I had never tried and that I’m still exploring. I began to generate a series of sounds obtained from field recordings, samples, etc. From then on, I started to morph all the sounds that, as seeds, were growing and transforming into something totally different, though preserving the characteristics of the initial seed. The grooves were treated in the same way.

«Indalo» was the first work with my friend Bruno Sanfilippo. He had just come from Argentina and that was the moment we met. We traveled together to Almeria, the desert south of Spain. The place astonished us and we decided to do something to reflect its nude beauty. I believe this disc is probably the darkest of my career, but it has a supernatural beauty.

And finally there’s my last work «Moontribe», a collection of both new and past pieces. Perhaps it’s here where I have developed more deeply my passion for morphing groovescapes and the surrounding atmospheres. It has coincided with the arrival of new equipment into, and it can be considered as a disc of transition, probably of what is forthcoming.

In this work I basically present a few compositions that were intended for collaborations. These collaborations were not produced due to different reasons, but one day, revising my tracks, I decided to use them in my new project. Fortunately everything began to take form and I completed it with adding three new pieces. I am very satisfied with the final result, especially its variety and richness.

Do you set yourself certain goals when composing new music or putting together an album?

Yes, I always try to improve and explore new ways in every new work. The artistic creation is a mental state that makes us feel life in all its intensity, but to come to this mental state everything must flow calmly. I practically try to revive all my experiences lived up to the moment, the ideas then flow and the mystery of the creation takes place.

How did you meet Bruno Sanfilippo?

When Bruno arrived at Spain, he contacted a record company in Barcelona to distribute his music in Spain. There he heard about me as it was the label where I had edited «Vestiges». We met each other and we decided to join our efforts in the diffusion of our respective careers. A great friendship was born out of this professional relationship.

What made you both decide to start your own record company ad21 music? How’s the company doing so far?

Releasing not dance-oriented electronic music is really complex nowadays. The distribution channels are rather complicated and sometimes you lose the control on what you do because there are few economic resources. The big record companies do not have this problem (though they have others), they count with a great structure and they work as refined companies where everything, even the smallest detail, is under control. This is not what generally happens in the small record companies, where the artist is inevitable damaged in the end. Today, private release seems to be one of the few alternatives that’s left for us. Furthermore, the internet and the piracy have changed the concept of releasing and selling music. We are in a deep moment of change and a classic conception of a record company does not work in these days. However, Bruno and I decide to start this venture; it is not easy due to the infinite details one must bear in mind. We’ve edited «Indalo», Bruno´s «Ad Libitum» and my own album «Moontribe» under our record label «ad21music». In all it was quiet exhausting since the three cds appeared at the same time. But, looking back on it, it’s an experience that was worth the effort. We will try to continue releasing our music through our label, but we will also consider releasing music of other musicians. The contact is always interesting and besides, every company record has its particular network that provides a general idea of the market.

What contacts do you have with other e-musicians? Is there anyone you’d like to work together sometime?

I usually contact many artists to exchange opinions and trade our cds. I remember one of the first was Jeff Pearce; I had edited «Vestiges» and he kindly commented the curious coincidence that the name of one of his disks was also «Vestiges». We exchanged our same titled cds and I discovered a great artist. Until then, I had never heard about him or his music. There were many other artists after him. We have even started a collaboration with Amir Baghiri; it’s on hold for the moment but it will probably come out some day.

I also have close contacts with musicians of the Barcelona scene, such as Dom F. Scab, John Lakveet, Odracir Lavid, Sergio Koval, etc. No doubt I’d like to work with many other artists, especially with the followers of the «Californian» school that I feel stylistically closer to.

Max, what’s your opinion about today’s electronic ambient music, how do you think it will develop?

There are two questions to analyze here: the artistic and the commercial one. Artistically, we are living a great moment, there are loads of artists doing big works and this is a good thing. The genre is evolving towards new forms and new ideas are born every day. Certainly, the technology encourages this bloom.

The other issue, the commercial one, seems to move in the opposite direction. The enormous amount of new music, ambient, space, electronic, etc. and the almost total oblivion of big means of diffusion of this genre make it very difficult to survive to it. I visualize this as two big waves, two big cycles evolving very slowly and, in any moment, maybe will coincide in a point, since everything is a cycle. I believe we must be ready for the moment we might benefit from the cycle.

What musical plans do you have in mind for the near future?

Right now I’m working on two new works. One continues the Techno-Tribal wave of «Moontribe», with new grooves and soundworlds.

The second one is a project that is called «The Talisman». I have been working on it for two years and it will probably take its definitive form somewhere this year. There will be no percussion on this disc and it will be my more atmospheric work until now. Part of this material was heard at my recent concert in Barcelona with Bruno Sanfilippo. For that occasion the pieces were accompanied by grooves, but in their final version they will be purely atmospheric.

You just mentioned the recent concert with Bruno Sanfilippo last February. Was this your first live-concert, how did things work out? Did you make any recordings of it?

Actually I had performed live before and I knew the pressure and the nerves before a performance. This was my first performance as an electronic musician and I’m quite satisfied with the outcome. Part of the success was due to having shared the work with my friend Bruno Sanfilippo.

In addition to this, we have relied on the collaboration of an excellent team of technical personnel, especially our visual effects technician did a great job.

All the pieces played at the concert were performed for the first time. Some of them are destined for new projects, others will be processed again to create new forms. Bruno and I first recreated the essence of «Indalo», our collaborative cd. Then each one has done a solo part with new tracks. We are planning to publish sound clips, video clips and photos of this event on our own web pages.

Website: www.maxcorbacho.com

Morpheus Music & The Mall Magazine

STYLE

Deep spacey ambience with powerful resonant beats. Moontribe consists of a series of confidently developed electro-atmospheres that slide past with velvet smoothness – clean synthetic sweeps and dense multilayered pads, embellished with mysterious bubbling effects and sonic turbulence. The percussive structures combine natural drums with electronic patterns in evolving cycles that are at times tribal, insistently mesmerising, then soft, dispersed to a trickle. When the beats drain away the inventive depth of Max’s electronic soundscaping is most apparent, luxurious rolling densities and luscious drones full of shifting aural strata

MOOD

The mood is mainly one of manipulated primitive rhythm and spacial ambiguity – ancient futuristic immersives, distant, yet touched with familiarity. The organic individuality of Max’s compositions stops the music from feeling cold or remote – rather a hypnotic warmth pervades everything, glowing sonic colour suffusing silky beds of ambient cloud.

ARTWORK

Water surface patterns with graphic enhancements fill all panels – on the front, vivid greens and blues ripple around pinks and bronze shades. Text on the external packaging is uncomplicated – only titles and basic information. Within we find an explanation of the project, a list of sound sources, thanks and contact details.

OVERALL

Moontribe is «a collection of previously not published tracks, destined originally to collaboration projects that finally did not see the light, plus two totally new pieces». This is Max Corbacho’s sixth CD and shows the composer to have developed an engrossing and mature sound – the final two pieces ‘Across The Spectrum’ and ‘Moontribe’ were written two years after the earlier pieces and betray a glorious absorbsion in texture and groove structure. The clarity and transparency of these tracks is a delight to the ear – pulling the listener into beguiling worlds of liquid reverberation and interwoven crystal impact.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM

Moontribe is a CD for ambient lovers fond of electro-tribal beats and lush, polished soundscaping. With similarities to Na-Koja-Abad and Steve Roach’s rhythmic material.

Glenn Folkvord / Electronic Shadows

«Nocturnal Emanations is Max Corbacho’s fourth album, a seamless longform work of ambient soundscapes, subtle electronic-tribal rythms, and sampled sounds. While perhaps not the most innovative combination of styles and sounds (many artists create this kind of ambient music) it all comes together in a pleasant mix and with an uplifting spirit. The sampled sounds fit very well with electronic textures, wether they are jungle sounds or more abstract underwater impression.

For those who think that 73 minutes of ambient floating music is too much, there are a handful of tracks with subtle beats and rythms, such as on The slow and wandering dust where electronic sounds (not typical drum or percussion sounds) are sequenced into gentle beat patterns that gives the ambient pads support and a sense of dynamic movement. On Along the moonlit rift the rythm patterns are slightly heavier, probably sampled sounds and processed electronically, but still quite «light» and full of space. But the general feeling of the album is that of far-out ambient space sounds, firmly rooted in electronic territory, without the use of flutes, guitar or wind chimes. The sound quality is excellent too; a professional recording and production.

Nocturnal Emanations falls nicely between Steve Roach’s Early Man and Jean Michel Jarre’s Waiting for Cousteau (the title track) with many details to discover during repeated listening sessions.

  Reviewed by Sergio Vilar for Nucleus Magazine

In this opportunity, Nucleus, had the immense pleasure to talk with the Spanish musician Max Corbacho, one of the most interesting and innovative European artists signed up inside the Ambient / Space Rock. Let us know in this I dialogue the ideas, works and projects to a creator’s future whose work deserves to be discovered without more delay.

To begin Max you could give us an express summary of your career for people that doesn’t know you?

Of agreement. I began as so many other youths being interested in the big groups of the 70, and little by little I decided, together with some friends, to mount a band of Rock. My first instrument was the guitar, Spanish and electric. Later, quite later, by the middle of the 90, I began to be interested in the electronic music, especially for the North American scene. I bought a synthesizer and I was fascinated by their power. Starting from then one can say that my current musical stage begins.

Well, do let us speak of your influences who have been directly you the more ones in the musical plane?

In my new electronic stage, my biggest influences are Vidna Obmana, Steve Roach and Robert Rich. Previously they have influenced me mainly the big groups of the 70, mainly the Pink Floyd of the first stage… their videotape «Live at Pompeii» caused me a deep impression. I am also a great admirer of the old music, mainly centuries XVl, XVll and XVlll.

And what is inspired to the moment to compose?

The remote and lonely places, the night, and in general the big spaces. I believe that it could never compose an urban topic. The relationship that exists between my music and the natural means is indivisible. Continually I carry out exits and intent to get rich with the received sensations. I also use the natural means as an it orchestrates more, recording natural sounds and then processing them.

Starting from that elements go developing your music?

I try to look for new roads continually. Now I am experiencing with a form of totally free composition, sometimes aleatory, joining and mixing previously created and manipulated elements.

Which the concepts that contain your disks are?

Well, maybe «Vestiges» and «The Resonant Memory of Earth» shares the same concept. A North American reporter said once my music transported to a place that we all take inside, eternally swept by the wind. I keep that sensation. In «Far Beyond The Immobile Point», the concept was taken out of the first chapter of Umberto Echo’s novel, «The Pendulum of Foucault» whose imagination prolonged the rope that sustains the pendulum until the confines of the universe, in a place that he calls ·»the immobile point».

Since you made reference to your new disk, How sees «The Resonant Memory Of Earth» now, to little of having been published?

Musically, now, after some months, I reconcile with this work again.

When you finish a project you have listened to it thousands of times, and in this point loses the reference a little. I listened to it recently in my friend’s house Bruno Sanfilippo again it, and I feel satisfied of the carried out work. With this disk has wanted to finish some roads undertaken in «Vestiges».

Do I suppose that the visual aspect should play an important part to the moment to present your music on a scenario, not?

At the moment I have not begun with the concerts. It is a pending subject that for luck Bruno Sanfilippo and I are working, and we plan to share it to lean on mutually. Of course the visual aspect wants him to be primordial part of the show. We have several ideas that I wait we can materialize. The generation of images in real time, generated by software starting from the music, is one of my ideas. At the moment, we are collecting images of places visited to manipulate them and that they serve us as base.

Ambient, electronic, experimental… could you give us a definition of your music?

It is always difficult to label a work, sometimes in oneself disk different styles cohabit. but we all know that at the moment to define the style is fundamental in the current market. Basically, «Vestiges» and «The Resonant Memory of Earth» could be framed inside the panorama of the Space music, while «Far Beyond The Immobile Point» goes into in the field of the Ambient.

Going to another topic, How do you see to the current musical scene?

I believe that we attend an explosion of the electronic music of vanguard. They have never had so many unknown artists presenting disks continually. The musical computer science has revolutionized the artistic creation. I only wait that everything this offer belongs together with a great demand, that which I believe that to the long one he will come given by the incorporation of new markets, especially China and the countries of the East.

Previously, when we talked about your musical influences, you made reference to several really innovative creators inside the style. What do you say about the work of artists like Roedelius, Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana or Bruno Sanfilippo? What aspects do they approach you to them?

They are big creators, I believe that right now they move the market. It is so much their force that they go drawing the road continually, at least in the world of the ambient-space.

Bruno Sanfilippo it begins now a new stage, after its establishment in Barcelona. I admire their previous works a lot, in particular I admire their meticulousness, he is extremely a musician retailer. I believe that it will surprise their followers with an evolution of their music. We have a very narrow relationship at personal level, that which will help us a lot in our respective careers.

In that projects are working at the moment?

Well, in several at the same time. I prepare a CD with heaps of electro-tribal percussions, taking advantage of new technologies, that which I want that it serves as base in the future concerts. I also have several CD´s in completely environmental mind, without percussions. And now Bruno Sanfilippo and I will begin to exchange material for a future CD group.

Well Max, we would thank you some words for our I publish by way of closing.

Because to thank to all their interest, I wait that in little time it can present them new works and desire that the audition of my music contributes to the personal growth, and to the diffusion of aspects like the tolerance, the solidarity and the protection of the natural environment. A great greeting to all from Spain.