Caleb Deupree , Ambient Visions

«Max Corbacho’s new release, Resonant Memory of Earth, should appeal to lovers of slow, quiet, dreamy ambience such as James Johnson’s Entering Twilight and the second disc of Steve Roach’s Dreamtime Return. Although nominally divided into four tracks, Resonant Memory is really a 73-minute opus with no breaks and few overt differences between the separate pieces.

Most of the album is composed of long, sweeping motions, too protean in form to be considered drones. Overtones from single pitches slowly divide and merge into each other, fed by occasional swaths of white noise. There are hints of melodies in Lands of Sacred Silence, and the distant promise of wildlife and morning birdsong in the beautiful long title track that closes the album, but elsewhere we hear gentle shimmering, poised halfway between sleep and waking.

The ambience is still and beatless except for a ten-minute interlude in the title track, where Corbacho introduces a simple rhythm loop of hand drums and seed rattles. Corbacho is a Spanish artist whose previous releases have been highly praised, and which focus on summer nights and nocturnal breezes. With this release, he provides a very spacious sound, layering the sonorities between both channels and with enormous reverberation that gives the listener a peaceful sense of distance.

  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.