At the moment of writing is our country in a cold and dark time, cold because of the temperature and the many rain, dark because of the short days but also because of the lockdown. We can therefore some warmth and positivism to use. Max Corbacho offers us through his music. The one from Barcelona electronic music artist is a specialist in creating the most beautiful synthesizer sounds which he layered on top of each other lays. This produces a serene and, at least for me, uplifting atmosphere on. In his early days, his music sometimes rhythms, albeit cautious; late today he who left behind. A Connection To The Wonder contains a trio numbers, varying in time between about thirteen minutes and almost forty minutes. The longest composition, the title piece, opens the CD. The song starts with gorgeous, Steve Roach-esque strings after which a very calm part entry does that all the time becomes softer. This track has to my opinion a bit like Roach’ masterpiece Structures From Silence. This Space Is Being Created I think it’s a great title to Max’ spatial music. About speaking to ambient specialists: the somewhat “rolling” sounds (I can do not describe it otherwise) and the structure that we hear here, I think a little bit towards the great album Planetary Unfolding by Michael Stearns. Quiet Renewal closes the CD with a series of very beautiful sounds. Max, thanks for this bright spot this dark time!

2021 |  CD | DIGITAL |  STREAMING  |  GO TO SHOP

The title of this album is well chosen as it’s an entrance into a magical world of expansive, serene textural vistas and alternate realities. An abundance of velvet, overtly smooth evolving tapestries is already on display on the 39-minute title track kicking things off, an intimate symphony transcending through time and space with various beautiful ethereal nods and immersive elements surfacing and fading during the ride. Overall, it’s a walk into the light with subtle melodic parts where tenderness, a flash of mourning as well as a sense of awe shine through the notes.

On “This Space is being created”, atmospheres shift to a tad darker, nocturnal tone while we journey across the view into massive cosmic environs. Soft pads lead into “Quiet Renewal” where gentle textural chord progressions in Steve Roach-modus create imaginary warm rays of sunlight.

In all, these are calm, and most gracious resonations are suitable companions addressing the celestial beyond as well interior spaces.

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With this third album, Max Corbacho completed the trilogy, which he began publishing in 2017. Its creation was inspired by night photographs, which he created during his meditations in Aragon, in the north of Spain. The strange rock formations fascinated him with their bizarreness, even the hauntingness that stood out especially in the night shots. That’s why he always chose these pictures for the covers of his three albums.

The latter, marked only by the Roman numeral III, brings six compositions, the main ones being the first and the last, which have roughly the same duration of about 20 minutes.

The first composition, Altar of Stillness, has been evolving into this form since 2003 through various reworkings. At night, everything seems a bit different, especially in a landscape with interesting rock formations. There are various ideas, often fears. However, this song does not evoke anything like that. It has a really apt name, because it is an immersion in the atmosphere of this landscape and thus itself. Corbacho chooses very subtle breaths and exhales of its electronic devices that literally caress you. To them are added mysterious sounds as if from elsewhere, from another world, the world beyond what is or is not seen. This makes the sacredness of this rest even more prominent. It is a very sensitive song that will literally embrace you and caress you with its tones.

Apparently, the immobility of the rocks given to them is expressed by the second, roughly nine-minute composition, into which the first passes. This is also expressed as Bonded from Beginning. The calm already established remains, only the color of the synthesizers has changed a bit and added to the bass tones. There is more weight and compactness in the composition.

Again, we move on to the next, shortest song, which lasts less than three minutes, Sleep Time Spores. She deviates a bit with her unusual sound creations and soon moves on to the fourth song of Lunation Sequence. At about night, Corbacho took into account all the influences that affected him, including the phases of the Moon.

He expresses it by the changing crystal tones and also by the kind of restlessness, the instability that is in them. Doesn’t that remind you of women’s moods, which are often influenced by the phases of the Moon? The song is almost ten minutes long. He continues later with such a sprawling of sound, a vague cluster from which tones or even a momentary melodic phrase occasionally peek out. But everything is hidden in the fog of sound.

We move almost silently to the fifth track Time Before Time. Not even a seven-minute song restores calm again, but there is something accelerated in it, it is not resting as if expecting what will follow. The color of the synthesizers is also a bit more aggressive, the phrases follow in quick succession.

In this spirit, we literally step into the last, over 20 minutes long song Skywatchers. I would express the feelings of this composition as a fullness, immobility and admiration for the greatness and grandeur of what we are witnessing.

Corbacho himself remarked on his three albums Nocturnes that the main feelings were silence, the shimmering light of the stars and the sweet scent of thyme that permeated all of Aragon.

My feeling from this album is that I might not document all the feelings, but convey only those that express just that silence, peace and admiration for the greatness and grandeur of this landscape.

☾

Genre: Ambient music, space music, atmospheric ambient, drone, soundscapes. Go to reviews.
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In 2011, Max Corbacho released “Lost Links”, a set of atmospheric and space music tracks that were shelved although they were composed initially to fit on a concept album, compilation or project that fell through. Those tracks are now found on the second disc of “Lost Links II”, so for a description of those, I refer to the original review. Well, there seemed to be much more unreleased, rescued, and abandoned pieces in Corbacho’s archive that now see the beautiful light of day as well. Here, another 74 minutes of enchanting, lush morphing and graceful slow-motion soundscapes divided over 9 tracks unfolds, completing the previous set very nicely.

These imaginary, dream-inducing textures make space and time dissolve effortlessly and are best cherished with quality headphones. I even dare say Max is surpassing Steve Roach by far on various deep atmospheric outings such as “The Present Miracle”, “Slow Rust”, “North Rose Alignment” and “Beyond Vaults”.

This release (the two-disc, deluxe 6-panel eco pack / digisleeve is limited to 200 copies) again proves Mr. Corbacho belongs to the league of best ambient composers around the globe. If you got a busy, stressful head, this is your ticket to slow it down and find balance again.

Genre: Ambient music, space music, atmospheric ambient, drone, soundscapes.
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If you were excited about the compilation «Lost Links», released years ago on the Relaxed Machinery label like me, pay attention, because Max Corbacho brings the whole concept again, and enriches it with a complete release of previously unreleased songs on the first half of this double album. On the second half we will find the original «Lost Links» and to make this release even better, we finally have this whole great album available on a beautiful 2CD digipack. Let’s take a look at it!

«Lost Links II – The Complete Collection» develops the idea elaborated in the first part. It brings older unreleased songs to the listener, which either appeared on compilations or for some reason did not make it to certain albums. And that makes me very happy, because especially my very favorite periods («The Talisman» and «Ars Lucis») are contained here to a large extent. On the first CD we will again meet songs from the period of «Ars Lucis» in the form of a beautiful North Rose Alignment and a shorter Beyond Vaults. The majestic Oversoul was released in a shorter version on the «Document» compilation on the Atmoworks label and, for example, Catacombs of Perception is one of the unused songs from The Talisman sessions (as well as the amazing pieces from the second disc Slow Thunder and Third Exposure).

The music performed by this Barcelona master of tranquility is, as always, softly flowing and richly colored meditation, it is spatially infinite. Corbacho evokes the impression of spatiality perhaps like like very few artists can do. Both parts of the album, ie the first nine songs first time released in this form, and the second part containing the original Lost Links contain a diverse range of feelings and colors and beautifully illustrate the nature of the development of Corbacho’s music. Amazing!

Genre: Ambient music, space music, atmospheric ambient, drone, soundscapes.
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Crepuscularly ear-tickling traceries keep on emerging, while peaceful surges of gracefully panoramic immenseness persistently coalesce with profoundly sweeping glimpses of silence. Solitarily enigmatic expanses clandestinely reveal all its colossal beauty, serenely embracing, breathlessly engulfing, eternally resonant and intensely towering. A grandiosely infinite oasis holding unmistakably transcendent sonic signatures of its Maestro, where warmly undulating meridians exquisitely collide with voluminously vertexing vistas. Goose bumps…

Released on digital formats April 9th, 2020 through Max Corbacho’s Silentsun label, the CD edition followed July 10th and is packaged in a 4-panel digisleeve limited to 200 copies. 74-minute long form masterpiece, phenomenal!!! And don’t forget, the final chapter of «Nocturnes» trilogy is gracing the sky since the end of January 2021…

Richard Gürtler (Apr 18, 2021, Bratislava, Slovakia)

Genre: Ambient music, space music, atmospheric ambient, drone, soundscapes.
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With “Nocturnes III”, Max Corbacho brings his audience the last chapter of the trilogy started in 2017 featuring music inspired by the vast and desolate night landscapes of Spain’s Aragon and Extremadura. Hardly any people live out there, as such being one of the few remaining places in Europe where one can still feel that wonderful sense of loneliness and stillness outside the maelstrom of our time.

Reminiscent of the previous volumes, the highly atmospheric, overall textural expanses celebrate the awe and wonder evocated by nature’s scenery as well as channelling its pure energy. It’s again a beautifully rendered calm, introspective aural world opening up here, surpassing the already high quality ambiences of the previous volumes. So ambient-aficionados: put on your headphones and sail away into these most gentle and immersive vistas. Nice going, Max.

Genre: Ambient music, space music, atmospheric ambient, drone, soundscapes.
2021 |  CD | DIGITAL |  STREAMING  |  GO TO SHOP

Offering a powerful sense of otherworldly ambient drift, Max Corbacho’s latest Echo of Longing was created over a four year period from 2015 to 2019, released near the end of last year. The 70-plus minute album contains only three extended tracks that will guide the listener into deep space ambient realms, through the fog, the gentle starlight, and the subtle shimmering sounds of epic expanses. In fact two of the three long cuts fold and blend together at the edges, and a listener may not likely know when one track meets the next other than a subtle change of feeling that follows with realization long after the transition has completed. Corbacho is an independent sonic sculptor who comes from the Badajoz province in southwestern Spain and has been releasing his music privately since around 1998, with nearly two dozen releases to date; his stock in trade (at least based on several previous releases I have heard) is long form epics of dense and hypnotic sonic landscapes that are strongly reflective of the subtleties of the natural world, immersive in every way, with a powerful sedative nature that will drop the listener into a magical and mysterious world that connects human existence with sounds of meditative self-discovery. While the three pieces could be described as floating ambient minimalism, there are all manner of sonic details that seem to be active just below the surface, constantly changing the contour of what is heard, mirroring the warmth and coolness, gentle breezes, and subtle waves within the sound, all coming together on a number of levels, constantly inviting the listener in for a cosmic deep dive. While the music here is entirely synth-based and atmospheric in form, it tends to invite comparison to some of the work of Steve Roach, the softer and gentler ambient efforts of Forrest Fang, as well as others in the same cosmic element. Echo of Longing is a powerful and authentic soundworld that captures the soul and the spirit.

Genre: Ambient music, space music, atmospheric ambient, drone, soundscapes.
2019 |  CD | DIGITAL |  STREAMING  |  GO TO SHOP

The third part of the Nocturnes trilogy is published 3 years after the previous volume. However, Corbacho’s music matured again, and in this case it happened in a fundamental way. The first song on the album was created for 17 long years. Its origin dates back to the period of the Indalo album and since then it has been modified and reworked to the form we hear on Nocturnes III.
The last part of the trilogy again holds its pleasant patina of night walks and digging in nature, meditation under the majesty of the starry sky. The atmosphere of the album is again accompanied by beautiful photographs that the author took at night during his trips.

Anyone who has listened to two previous albums is rightly waiting for the spiritual and energetic continuity of the previous parts. We are re-immersed in the meditative space of the silence of the night, resting inside ourselves with the occasional accompaniment of cicadas and crickets. All the music again provides the warm majesty of the infinitely clear night sky and its noble stars. We are thrown into our Mother’s womb and what is it that we hear? A deep love of life and gratitude for all that God has given us is beautifully imprinted in a new album by the Spanish Grand Master of Spiritual Electronics. Put on your headphones and go out into the countryside in the late hours. And look up. You will be so carried away that you will not return. Your soul will stay there at least on some level. You will be literally rejuvenated when listening to Corbacho’s music. You will be more happy, you will live more. He can do this ambient.

Ambient music is not for everyone. It is a profound path of self-knowledge. It is very pleasant music, but the wounded soul often rejects it. I will allow myself personal advice. If listening to such music initially hurts you emotionally, listen more to your spiritual compass. You can come up with unsuspected starting points. This is ambient. This is a cure. Enjoy it in love.

Genre: Ambient music, space music, atmospheric ambient, drone, soundscapes.
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It’s a strange new world these days, hopefully only a temporary disturbance in life’s continuum, but a disturbance nonetheless, causing artists to look inward for hope and spiritual relief. Corbacho recorded this long form piece in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic from march to April 2020 at his studio in Barcelona, Spain, a country hit particularly hard by the virus, that few saw coming. The Unfolding Dawn is a single piece of music, a few seconds shy of 74 minutes, coming on softly like starlight, flowing in subtle waves of sound moving gently in an introspective and seemingly trance inducing freefall into the depths of shimmering beauty. Created using synthesizers, sequencers, and atmospheres, the proceedings move forward at a near glacial pace, slowly but determinedly unfolding much like the evolution of the darkened sky toward the first rays of the morning sun, with an immersive quality that can’t easily be ignored. The piece has numerous layers that all coexist in a slow motion evolutionary process, much like a living, breathing being, incorporating all of life’s subtleties as each layer flows effortlessly forward. Don’t expect any sharp edges, excessive dynamic shifts or busy sequences here – there’s none of that – remember the word ‘glacial’ which describes the slow motion evelution of shades, colors and shadows perfectly, in tune with the cycles of nature all around in every form. In all, a powerful statement of beauty and subtlety that makes for a soothing and immersive sonic experience.

Genre: Ambient music, space music, atmospheric ambient, drone, soundscapes.
2020 |  CD | DIGITAL |  STREAMING  |  GO TO SHOP