Max Corbacho’s Moontribe is a heady collection of ethno-cyber-ambient rhythmic soundscapes that makes my blood race even while its darker elements cause the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up!

Hauntingly beautiful yet also shadowy and foreboding, the propulsive combination of ethnic beats with fractal and skitch rhythms on the opening “Suntribe” are buoyed by flowing washes of synthesizers. Obviously, comparisons can be made to either tribal or groove-oriented Roach recordings, but one could just as easily compare parts of this to psychetropic’s china radio sunshine. However, this is neither imitative nor derivative. The echoed booming effects that open “Out of Nothing” yield to kinetic fractal beats wedded to sensual primal rhythms (faint rainstick and rattle sounds surface now and then) along with a slurping sense of viscosity later in the track.

On the song “Distant Dwellings” the pulsing rhythms are unique, as least to my ears, consisting of bassy pulses and metallic skritches, which when mixed with ethereal high-pitched synths and low dronish chorales results in an imaginative propulsive trip across an alien landscape, teeming with a cybernetic lifestream coursing underneath you as you glide overhead. By the song’s end, though, the rhythms are gone, replaced by nocturnal sound effects and a flowing series of drones and washes. “Unknown Radiance” is a relatively rhythmless song, consisting of echoed animalistic sounds, heard as if from within a cave, along with deep slow washes of EM/spacemusic analog keyboards. “Across the Spectrum” returns the album to frenetic fractal/skitch beats as these are folded in slowly over the patient spacemusic textures. The beats eventually become pronounced and even oppressive (purposely), intermixed by what sounds like exhalations from an exhausted runner. The album concludes with the opus-length (nearly twenty minutes) title song, a slow excursion into dark soundscapes, a la Robert Rich from A Troubled Resting Place, although with a heavy dose of primal rhythms at its start, courtesy of more processed percussion on stone, stick, and hand drums. Percussion is deeply echoed and panned, so this song (if not the whole CD) would benefit from being played in a quiet dark room on a superb sound system. Most of this last track contains drifting mixtures of tones, drones, sounds, and alien effects in a miasma that both comforts the listener (somehow, Corbacho has instilled a sense of warmth in the music) and also creates a vague feeling of uneasiness. It all winds down slowly (maybe too slowly, as your patience may start to wear thin, although to the artist’s credit, he keeps things interesting even as the assorted elements evaporate one by one).

I’m sure people who have digested all of Steve Roach’s, vidnaObmana’s, and Robert Rich’s recordings could hear more similarities than I did on Moontribe, but I found the CD to be more than individualistic enough to keep me interested and entertained. I especially liked the blend of different percussion, beats, and rhythms that Corbacho used throughout the recording. Engineering is excellent, as mentioned above. For my money, while not as compelling as Terra Ambient’s The Gate, this album certainly deserves a spot on the same shelf. If darkly tinted ethno-tribal ambient, with some deep cosmos spacemusic thrown in for good measure, is your thing, Moontribe should prove to be a good purchase.

Bill Binkelman

WIND and WIRE

http://www.windandwire.com

Bert Strolenberg, www.sonicimmersion.org

«Nocturnal Emanations is the 4th album of the Spanish ambientcomposer Max Corbacho, which again is worth the long wait. It features typical quiet longform ambient-spacemusic divided in 8 tracks, in which transparent synthwashes slowly develop and desolve. A certain comparison to the current ambient excursions and light drone-textural worlds of his US collegue Steve Roach (again) can’t be denied, but next to that, Corbacho has arranged a beautiful backing with a vast aray of environmental sounds and fx’s, giving the musical painting an almost dense atmosphere. The slow flowing and morphing soundscapes, sometimes accompanied by distinct ambient percussion and sequencertreats (in which a slight high-tech component like Vir Unis is obvious), even gain effect when experienced in the evening or at night when using headphones. Stillness and introspectiveness all make up for over 73 highly atmospheric music, which seems to be the standard for such recordings since a few years.»

Phil Derby / Exposé Magazine

«Vestiges is a great ambient expanse of soundscapes much in the style of Roach, but with a Spanish flair, particularly in the percussion that is added. This is immediately evident on the first track, «Desolada.» Despite a healthy dose of drums, the sweeping synthesizer textures that surround them convey a sense of calm. Like much of Roach’s more organic works, the music lives and breathes. «Night Caravan» continues the feeling of spaciousness, as the ambient sounds envelope the very pleasant drumming. Slightly more active at first is «First Rain,» but the relaxing ebb and flow continues thoughout. In fact, the drums disappear for the first time over the latter half of this track. The drumming returns, slightly more tribal, on «Erosion.» Throughout, one is reminded of classic Steve Roach discs like Dreamtime Return, or Desert Solitaire.

Titles like «Death Valley» draw such comparisons even closer. This is the sparsest piece,though each of the last three tracks is very free flowing, very ambient, with little or no percussion. The title track has some brighter tones mixed in, and reminds me somewhat of American space music artist Glenn Deardorff. It makes a perfect closer to an extremely relaxing and very enjoyable CD.

«This is an evocative release where the melody, wrapped up in floating textures, goes through a universe of magic and mystery. The CD in general could be labelled as Ambient / Space Music.
However, the melodies and the rhythms incorporate elements of World Music, as well as Industrial traits. The music is slow, although it does not lack rhythm in certain themes or passages. The rhythmic structure of the music tends to be based on the percussion. The melodies are dense, unearthly, enigmatic».