JOSÉ LUIS FERNÁNDEZ LEDESMA & MARGARITA BOTELLO: SOL CENTRAL

This album is just amazing, in fact, "SolCentral" remains one of the most accomplished JLFL works ever. The sonic pallet displayed in this album is varied and solid, inscrutable and shocking, while standing out as irresistibly appealing to those who are genuine lovers of avant-garde music. The experimental aesthetic journey provided by the "Sol Central" listening experience doesn't take prisoners. Margarita Botello really shines here more brightly than usual, and so do the occasional collaborators at their own turns - it was necessary, indeed, since the compositional ideas and subsequent arrangements are really demanding. Just as an anecdote, let me tell you that Chris Cutler himself (one of the ultimate Rio ideologists) has publicly eulogized this work and Fernández Ledesma's vision. The first 35 374 minutes are occupied by the namesake suite: 'Sol central' is a whole new paradigm of musical splendor and splendid musicality, a defying architecture of dissonant ideas gathering a myriad of layers and cadences, a whole river of dexterous sounds that goes flowing through all its seven sections. The Art Bears-inspired 'Datura Inoxia' kicks off as a powerful set of contrasts that delivers an ordained succession of climaxes and anticlimaxes: genius and madness fused together in one single status. After this tremendous start, things get a bit more relaxed but not less crazy with 'Amnesia': the apparently restful interactions between oboe and percussion are cleverly counterpointed by the disturbing choral arrangements. 'El Avatar' returns to the realms of explicit energy in a Univers Zero-meets-Henry Cow sort of way, comprising an exotic amalgam built by keyboards and sundry percussions, augmented by floating guitar washes and ravishing adornments on synthesizer and woodwind. 'Por los Cuatro Costados' is built around a nucleus of synth layers that seem to evoke the ethereal gloom of autumn fog: the air of disturbance is undeniably patent, but there's still some room for serenity thanks to the relaxing lines provided by the oboe. So far, so good, or to be more precise, so great. and there's still more greatness to come. The restlessness that had only been subtly alluded to on 'Por los Cuatro Costados' comes out with a vengeance in 'La Gran Feria', like a forest fire willing to destroy everything along the way. This track brings back the relentless intensity of the first section's explicit passages, albeit with an augmented sense of tension and density. This section is playful in an oppressive fashion, playful like a fair of ghosts surrendered to a cathartic ritual: the confluent elements are RIO Art Bears-style, avant-jazz and musique concrete. 'Ciencias Celestes' digs beeper in the fusion factor: once again, the interaction between keyboard layers and percusión builds the basic nucleus, with the other instruments and the chanting adding their own colors to the main picture. The explosive trumpet solo delivered by Bringas states an air of tension across the predominant ethereal atmospheres. Last, section VII 'La de los Acertijos' retakes the exotic moods that had already been present in section III, in this way creating a perfect coda for this suite's global sequence. This suite alone is a masterpiece, but there's still one more track called 'Pueblos Perdidos'. This one fills the album's final 9 minutes on a different note, more minimalistic (probably inspired, to a degree, by the mystic side of Popol Vuh), putting an emphasis on the mysterious, and so, steering away from the explicit celebrations that had taken place in the suite's sections. The tribal thyrhm structure is not celebratory really: it's more like the pace of thoughts in the mind during a flow of meditations. The lines drawn by the trumpet and woodwinds are so lyrical, so magical, as is Botello's chanting. "Sol Central" is a total gem of avant-garde progressive music - definitely, this is not for every prog fan, but the RIO lover will find in this album a source of hope for the future of contemporary experimental music. What else can I say? José Luis Fernández Ledesma is a genius.