An excellent review for Ubeboet – Archival on Massimo Ricci’s website Touching Extremes.
Miguel Angel Tolosa’s music navigates the large estuary where the waters of drones, field recordings and intelligent looping generate dangerous undercurrents. Rarely – make that “never” – you’ll be able to deem one of his albums as under-average, every sound carefully positioned and sensibly left to increase a composition’s value in mixes that favor restrained awareness and unswerving meaningfulness to shallow bell-and-whistle rituality. Three chapters shape up this limited edition LP (200 copies, so act quickly). The first side is entirely taken by a 20-minute construction of long-drawn-out frequencies and environmental echoes, infrequent thuds and noises momentarily interrupting the entrancement. The accurate adjective for this soundscape is “nocturnal”, with all the relative implications; the tenebrous atmosphere is tangible, yet the tension doesn’t grow up to a point of distress. Ultimately, listeners are given a vast space for pondering, minus the smell of low-cost incense. The second half is even better: initially we benefit from a mantric spiral obtained through a superimposition of choral loops of the medieval kind (a colour that Ubeboet uses with great mastery). This experience buttresses the subconscious, making us forget the artificial plans for the painless inflation of repute usually devised by this sector’s arcane dabblers. The last episode is distinguished by a poignant chant, sampled by Tolosa – heaven knows where – and repeated as a hymn until the record’s end. Our approval is warranted by the ideal balance between the few well-deployed constituents and the serious attempt to picture a spiritual dimension without tripping over indecency. Not an easy challenge, but the result is a win.
Read the original article here: http://touchingextremes.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/ubeboet-%E2%80%93-archival/