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 new album. The fine cover photo, made by Max himself, is made in the Spanish Aragon. In comparison to the album Splendid Labyrinths that had one long composition, on Nocturnes we hear three. The first track Dark Sky Opening is quite long again with 52:50 minutes… As we know from Max and especially on his more recent albums, his music consists of long held, wide, notes (created with synthesizers and samplers) who in my opinion can contribute to a piece of reception in this world. We need this badly! The sounds max produces are wonderful, soft and with lots of details. They come quietly and as the reach a high point, they slow down until a moment that they almost seem to disappear. But then they return again. It reminds me of the sea. This is absolutely great.
Steve Roach, de grandmaster of ambient, greets here but personally, Max’ music appeals to me more. The atmosphere in Stellar Time is somewhat darker. But also here I hear elements which are brighter and that is nicely done. In my opinion in Ghost In The Moon, with 9:03 minutes the shortest piece, the atmosphere of the night is most prominent. You really get the feeling of sitting in an open field at night while looking at the stars. Again, Max has delivered an excellent album that can be regarded as the absolute top in this genre.
Info: www.maxcorbacho.com.
©2017-Paul Rijkens, Dutch progressive rockmagazine iO Pages

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, like many other human sensations, often needs a stimulus to affirm ourselves in our musical imagination, a stimulus that can only start from titration. Being a major part of the cosmos, and of the scenario that insists above our heads in a nearly total way, is an indirect emotional correlation that can be relied upon; In the classic ambient music attempts to reproduce specific aspects of the night have not failed: think of Robert Rich with his Nocturne inserted in the Premonitions (characterized by a drone in just intonation working on the psychological background) or Vidna Obmana of The Contemporary Nocturne (Which yields an elaborate and mysterious form of night vision) or even to the devastating conceptuality of William Basinski’s Nocturnes. Max Corbacho provides the first episode of his night-time trilogy: inspired by photo sessions made during the night, Corbacho tracks the best music experiences of the genre, trying to even transfer the emotion of his photos into music To make them available to the listener in music format. «Nocturnes» therefore works on the quality of sounds, sound panoramas made of exquisite lines of synthesizers and brings with it the idea of a night of hunting cosmological beauties where, in our neural imagination (induced by music), we can constantly experience surprises, More or less bright densities that open doors, seek further discovery and depth. Composed of three movements, at Max’s nightlife there are all the elements for a pedagogical observation of the night sky and of what can project beyond its unknown space, a Humanity that is willing to follow codes. The longest, longest move, makes you want to check out the wonders of Aragon’s skies (the splendid 52 minutes of Dark Sky Opening, which make up 85% of the total work), but then it lays worlds more and more divided between Stellar Time and second movement until the darkness of the truth (Ghost of the Moon, third movement).

Original article in Italian:

Tra rievocazioni notturne e sollevamenti organici.

Riprodurre esattamente la sensazione della «notte» è manovra molto difficile nella musica. A differenza delle altre arti come la letteratura, la poesia o il cinema, in cui il riferimento è ben preciso e specificato dall’immagine proiettata dal testo o dallo schermo, nella musica si difetta di un trasporto neurale equivalente. La notte, al pari di molte altre sensazioni umane, spesso ha bisogno di uno stimolo per affermarsi nella nostra immaginazione musicale, stimolo che può partire solo dalla titolazione. Trattandosi di una parte rilevante del cosmo, e dello scenario che insiste al di sopra delle nostre teste in maniera pressoché totale, è ad una correlazione emotiva indiretta che si può far affidamento; nella classica ambient music i tentativi di riprodurre aspetti specifici del notturno non sono mancati: si pensi a Robert Rich con il suo Nocturne inserito nelle Premonitions (caratterizzato da un drone in just intonation che lavora sullo sfondo psicologico) o al Vidna Obmana di The Contemporary Nocturne (che restituisce una forma elaborata e misteriosa di visioni notturne) o ancora alla concettualità devastante dei Nocturnes di William Basinski.
Max Corbacho fornisce il primo episodio di una sua trilogia sul «notturno»: ispirato da sessioni fotografiche effettuate durante le ore notturne, Corbacho traccia la rotta delle migliori esperienze musicali del genere, cercando di trasferire nella musica addirittura l’emotività delle sue foto, così da renderle disponibili all’ascoltatore in formato musicale. «Nocturnes» lavora dunque sulla qualità dei suoni, panorami sonori composti da squisite linee di sintetizzatori e porta con sé l’idea di una notte a caccia di bellezze cosmologiche dove, nella nostra immaginazione neurale (indotta dalla musica) si possono verificare continuamente sorprese, densità più o meno luminose che aprono porte, cercano la scoperta ulteriore e la profondità. Composto da tre movimenti, nei notturni di Max ci sono tutti gli elementi per una constatazione pedagogica del cielo notturno e di ciò che può proiettare oltre il suo spazio non conosciuto, un Umanesimo che è volontà di seguire codici.
Il primo movimento, il più lungo, fa venir voglia di andare a verificare le meraviglie dei cieli dell’Aragona (gli splendidi 52 minuti di Dark sky opening che costituiscono l’85% del lavoro complessivo), ma poi lambisce mondi sempre più divisi tra meraviglia e torbidezza (Stellar Time, secondo movimento) fino all’oscuramento delle verità (Ghost of the moon, terzo movimento).

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 nights is silence, stillness, the twinkling light of the stars, and the sweet fragrance of thyme that impregnates everything in these regions of Aragon in Spain.» That the two images stretching across the inner and outer sleeves of the CD’s package could pass for photos taken by a space shuttle on the surface of a neighbouring planet isn’t insignificant either, given the style of deeply atmospheric space ambient the Barcelona-based producer specializes in. With a starlit sky shrouding the landscape in semi-darkness and blurring its details, the cover image could just as easily be showing a location on the moon’s surface as one on our own planet.

Using synthesizers, samplers, and looping devices, Corbacho has fashioned three connecting soundscapes on the seventy-four-minute recording to evoke the awe-inspiring and otherworldly stillness of the natural world during the night hours. Though three tracks are indexed and titled, Nocturnes plays like a single-movement soundscape wherein long trails of murmuring synthesizers overlap. The most immersive track of the three is «Dark Sky Opening,» whose fifty-three-minute duration can’t help but overshadow the other two. That said, the dramatic, cavernous undercurrents that darken «Stellar Time» and «Ghost of the Moon» provide a subtly contrasting counterpoint to the largely serene mien of the opener.

If it seems expertly done, there’s a reason: influenced by artists such as Brian Eno, Robert Rich, and Steve Roach, Corbacho has been crafting electronic soundscapes for almost two decades and has progressively refined his space ambient style since his debut, Vestiges, appeared in 1999. Album releases have appeared with regularity ever since, with two, Splendid Labyrinths and Future Terrain, preceding Nocturnes by two years. Like time-lapsed photography, the new collection’s slow-motion material drifts serenely, the music shimmering and radiating like the gentle exhalations of a sleeping body. Exploiting the efficacy of looping and reverb, Corbacho strengthens the oceanic character of his album’s material and intensifies its time-suspending quality.
June 2017

«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 talented Max Corbacho to set out on a vast journey of expansive textures, deep ambiences and spheres.

The 73-minute outcome, kicked off by the epic 52-minute track «Dark Sky Opening», is a most calming, lush and dreamy affair of carefully layered, slow morphing soundscapes and loops that spiral slowly up and downward in velvet spaciousness. It’s soothing current, deep quality and intrinsic voice line up most nicely beyond the tranquil, infinite-playback ambient works of Steve Roach where space and time seem to have dissolved. While unwinding, the emotive sonic vistas (sliding into some shadows on the two shorter pieces now and then) spread a distinct perfume of infiniteness, awe and wonder through its veins while a focused ear will also pick up currents of soft glistening surfacing occasionally.

Headphone listening is highly recommended to experience the full scope, depth and profound immersion embedded in this quality ambient release.

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 «Dark Sky Opening». Dense, deepdown dronedrift dioramas for heliocentric headz.

May 2017
Smooth, 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, hypnotically heaving, becalmed, meandering. This is a tranquil composition that naturally wells up and over the listener, submerging, buoying up, carrying one afloat… Subsequent tracks see what had until now been background shadow bleed forward, building an uneasy weight that gathers subtly in Stellar Time and more prominently in Ghost of the Moon. There is a distinct sense of infinite space and the immensity of empty sky that is obviously heightened by the accompanying artwork and track titles revealing the inspiration for this rather personal project. Nocturnes is an ambient work of the highest calibre that rewards a full and persistent immersion. 

Nocturnes is presented within an elegant digipack of twin panels adorned by Max’s own atmospheric imagery captured over a series of night photography sessions. An otherworldly panorama spreads across the outer cover – the enormity of the bejewelled night sky acting as backdrop to the album and track titles. Within, another crepuscular vista glows with curious nocturnal warmth, credits and background information once more set out upon the sky. The disc is clasped upon the right inner panel repeating the cover art in reverse. The engrossing beauty of the visuals enclosing this music invite the listener to experience something of the wonder that lead Max Corbacho to compose the music of Nocturnes making the package a pleasingly tight whole.

The discography of Max Corbacho has grown into an impressive body of work over recent years, given weight by the artists’ obvious depth of commitment to the genre. Here Max Corbacho presents a complete musical/visual experience inspired by after-dark excursions into wild open spaces. The soft-edge subtleties, the serenity of after hours and the feel of the vastness of the open air are all threads picked up and woven into this enveloping production. The three tracks range from the huge Dark Sky Opening at fifty two minutes fifty seconds through the eleven forty four Stellar Time to the concluding piece Ghost of the Moon at just over nine minutes. Promotional material explains, «In this new work, Max Corbacho vanishes edges and shapes of sound to introduce the listener to a surreal landscape of ghost textures, blurring time and projecting a new world, hidden before the sunset. The characteristic elements in the sound depth of Corbacho are firmly present: dense harmonic layers of synthesizers combined with rich overtones flow freely in time like shadows in a dreamlike, fuzzy blooming of colorist chords and textures.» Why not listen for yourself at Max Corbacho’s extensive Bandcamp page or explore more of the release at the official Max Corbacho web site.

 MORPHEUS MUSIC REVIEWS

It’s for this reason that I don’t like naming ambient subgenres. When you call something like this album «space ambient», it sucks away the wonder and excitement of an aesthetic: it turns it into a cheap new age CD with a title like The Cosmic Dance or Jupiter’s Song. It’s not completely inaccurate, but it reduces something absolutely beautiful into planetarium background music.

Not that there’s anything wrong with planetarium background music; it’s simply not what Ars Lucis is, at least not to me. It sounds like a church between the worlds, a liminal space of stained glass and orderly pews. It sounds like walking into the delivery room as you’re being born. It sounds like the menu music for some futuristic operating system. It sounds like walking into some blank place that hasn’t been created yet, feeling like a speck of dust on a white canvas.

And yes, it sort of sounds like space. But it sounds like so much more than that.

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 the high bell-like textures and low rumbling music far apart from one another. I find my mind benefits greatly from this construction as there is so much space within the track, and one does not feel cluttered by the music.

Corbacho’s Ars Lucis is about as non-invasive and atmospheric as music gets. There’s deliberately nothing to hold on to and so the mind is held & the body can breath without distraction. It is atmospheric and reverent music at its best.

«Simply Gorgeous»

by Endoflogic