Dorosoto
Absolutely brilliant album of blissed out synthetics and ambient ai electronics. At many points during the record I was overcome with nostalgic feelings of the heyday of electronic music, but the production is grounded in the present. My hat is off to you for this one, def up there with the best of the year for me.
Favorite track: Mett.
For Balmat’s fourth release, we turn our attention close to home: to the Mallorca-born, Barcelona-based artist Nueen, aka Nacho Pezzati.
Nueen has been developing his highly personal style of blissfully Balearic ambient over the past few years, with releases on labels like Quiet Time Tapes and Good Morning Tapes. On Diagrams of Thought, he explores new depths in his sound. His atmospheres remain bucolic, but there’s a disturbance at work, a hint of uncertainty swirling beneath seemingly placid pads.
While Diagrams of Thought retains the ambient (or at least ambient-adjacent) focus of all Balmat’s releases so far, the album also marks new frontiers for the label; the album’s first half is graceful and largely beatless, but the mood grows murkier with the foggy drones of “Dome” and the intimations of liquid drum ’n’ bass on “Maxima”; “Veta,” meanwhile, might just represent the most forceful rhythm to appear on a Balmat release yet.
Despite the album’s considerable range of moods, tones, and textures, it’s all tied together by a singular preoccupation, says Nueen:
“Lately, I’ve become conscious of my fascination for the notion of the break, on a conceptual and musical level. What’s temporary and what’s permanent. Thinking and making out of what isn’t there, yet is. Some people would call it silence, but it could also be a skip of the needle, an ellipsis. Something very basic—or Basic Channelesque. A set of sounds and silences, structuring just a hint of rhythm. Sounds that become silences, and silences that become sounds.
The other day, I was saying to someone that for me, the sound of electric current running through the power lines above the train tracks is the most ambient sound there is. That infinity in which you never quite grasp all the harmonics and reverberations. It’s a form of time detained or expanded. Recently, I’ve been rereading Morton Feldman—you can tell, right? Vertical time, the silence that sounds. A sort of sacredness. My mind is blown every time I walk into a church, for whatever that’s worth.”
credits
released October 28, 2022
Written & Produced by Nacho Blanco Pezzati.
Mastered by Pedro Pina.
Cover artwork by José Quintanar.
Designed by Basora.
supported by 77 fans who also own “Diagrams of Thought”
An album i liked so much, i bought it twice. Beautiful synth scapes that pull the listener into deep realms of undulating sonic shimmers and canyon shadows of dub techno. There are nods in the direction of Von Oswald's Channel but the approach is completely signature to Hoavi and it arrives with confidence. I could listen to 'Cosworth' on repeat for an hour and never tire. neglectsound
supported by 60 fans who also own “Diagrams of Thought”
This album was featured on the May 30, 2023 episode of Foxy Digitalis Daily: https://foxydigitalis.zone/2023/05/30/foxy-digitalis-daily-5-30-23-%c2%b5-ziq/ Brad Rose
Rough-and-tumble folk guitars co-mingle with stark synth melodies on the LA duo's third LP, bridging the gap between Americana and ambient. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 22, 2023