Ricardo Villalobos

Salvador (Frisbee Tracks, 2006) collects material from 1998-2001 plus a remix of Senor Coconut's Electrolatino. The thunderous Que Belle Epoque 2006, the samba-like frenzy of Tempura, the android chant of Unflug, the rapid-fire emissions of Logohitz and the pounding locomotive of Lazer@Present are lively and entertaining, but pale in comparison with the austere art to come.

The process of creating a rhythms "is" the music on Alcachofa (Playhouse, 2003), his first major album. The ping-pong beat (mostly in a trotting mode but with a cute venture into Caribbean congas) of opener Easy Lee is one of the most straightforward (the treated vocals are always a mixed blessing on the album's tracks and this is one track in which they annoy more than entertain). I Try To Live boasts perhaps the most infectious beat, used as a platform to launch into an all-out house locomotive.
What You Say Is More Than I Can Say is instead a good example of the mutations that a beat can undergo in a Villalobos piece, running the gamut from pounding house beat to Caribbean motifs and from charleston-like syncopation to industrial robotic ticking. The treatment of vocals and beats lends Fools Garden both a ghostly quality and a tribal quality, with the former prevailing when aquatic keyboards invade the space. The industrial atmosphere of Bahaha Hahi is created by weaving together beats that sound like a sequence of little explosions, random digital events and eerie distortions. The electronic keyboards contribute to the hiccupping beat of Dexter by releasing languid harp-like reverbs. These are manically crafted objects that hide a lot of complexity underneath their skeletal appearances.
Y.G.H. is one of the exceptions to the rule that the rhythm is centerstage, because its identity lies with the flow of oneiric manipulations of keyboards and voice. Waiworinao relies on a fractured jazzy guitar melody that duels with steel drums.

The au Harem d'Archimede (Perlon, 2004), whose title is a pun on geometry's most famous theorem, further purified and sanitized Villalobos' method. Hireklon is an icy festival of micro-beats coupled with an alienated soliloquy of acoustic guitar. Serpentin harks back to classic pounding house music but smothers its hedonistic quality into vitreous digital sheen. Miami perhaps best exemplifies the brainy and somewhat sinister quality of the album, thanks to a bass line that seems lifted from a Weather Report album and bubbling keyboards that are reminiscent of early electronic poems. The most subtle piece, Theoreme d'Archimede, quotes rhythmic patterns by classic U2 and Pink Floyd songs before building up to an equatorial-style fervor. Another atmospheric zenith is Hello Halo, thanks to the android/computer noises that populate its harmless beat. What is missing in this album is the kind of catchy and bouncy rhythms that fueled the dances on Alcachofa: Temenarc 1 is the closest that Villalobos gets to replicating that sponstaneous thrust. Overall, this album lacks the creative genius of its predecessor, although it refines the craft to superhuman levels.

The double-EP Achso (Cadenza, 2006) contains four lengthy pieces. Sieso is little more than a vain display of Villalobos' polyrhythmic bouncing beats. Erso adds a Brazilian flavor to the micro-orgy. Duso has a cubist-style deconstructed melody hidden in between the bubbling beats. However, it's Ichso, that steals the show, juxtaposing a theremin-like wailing sound to an acrobatic booming rhythm, the former sounding like the birth pangs of a melody and the latter sounding like a tapping show.

The cd Fizheuer Zieheuer (Playhouse, 2006) collects the 37-minute Fizheuer Zieheuer (originally a two-part EP), and the 35-minute Fizbeast, described as a toolbox for djs. Fizheuer Zieheuer is one of his purest creations. It opens with a looped horn fanfare and marching beats, one emphasizing the propulsive power of the other. Then the horns play their melody for real, and it's a funereal melody that has little to do with the jovial Disney-like rhythm. The second part basically remixes both the pulsing fanfare and the marching beat until only a faint echo of the originals is left. Compared with previous peaks of Villalobos' art, this one gains in subtlety what it loses in intricacy.

Fabric 36 (2007) is another anthology, or, more accurately, a mix of his own compositions and productions. The problem is that this is organized like a dj mix, and the various fragments capture the imagination only for a few minutes. The only two pieces that take their time to develop an idea, Andruic & Japan (12 minutes) and Primer Encuentro Latino-Americano (10 minutes), are rather trivial. It doesn't sound like the work of the same Villalobos who delivered such complex works.

The double-EP Vasco (Perlon, 2008) delivered Minimoonstar (another tour de force of beat-sculpting, that manages to combine dramatic pathos and new-age ecstasy via cryptic bursts and ghostly drones), the neurotic Electonic Water, and the relatively straightforward stomping Amazordum.

Villalobos and Max Loderbauer's double disc Re: ECM (ECM, 2011) was a wildly creative remix of old ECM records. Another collaboration between the two yielded the simpler techno of the EP Peverelist (Honest Jons, 2011).

Se sei interessato a tradurre questo testo, contattami