A wonderful review from Textura!

Textura

Federico Durand: Jardin de Invierno
SPEKK

Some albums feel as if they've been purposefully and rather cynically designed with mass consumption in mind; others give the impression of having been created as personal expressions meant to be shared with a small circle of friends. Falling clearly within the latter category is Federico Durand's Jardín de invierno (winter garden), which might well be the Argentinean sound artist's most intimate recording to date.

Filled with delicate acoustic and electronic sounds and inspired by natural surroundings, it's a serene, twelve-song collection the self-described “small melodies” maker crafted at an old house's winter garden in the mountains of La Cumbre. Significantly adding to the impression made by the album is the fact that each piece was recorded live in one take without edits or enhancements. As a result, one never loses sight of the tracks' spontaneous creation as their tiny sounds tickle the ear.

In real time, Durand assembles with meticulous care sounds of acoustic guitar, synthesizer, music boxes, electric piano, and assorted other devices into ever-mutating reveries of largely brief duration. Many of them possess a peaceful and naturally soothing ambient character (e.g., “Florilegio,” “Ver a traves del follaje”) that conjures the image of Durand contentedly creating material in a garden surrounded by trees and plants, the sun filtering in and illuminating everything with golden light.

Smothered in ambient mist, the various elements coalesce to form gently undulating streams that softly sparkle and murmur. “Un gran bosque rodea el monoblock” conveys a rather sundazed quality in its blend of woozy melodic figures, whirring tones, and hiss. “Tarde de lluvia” ascends to a rather celestial sphere when Durand wraps its tinkling tones in a thick mass of whistling exhalations, while “Las sierras se disuelven entre las nubes” closes the forty-seven-minute recording on a particularly vaporous and ethereal note.

Like many an artist before him, Durand's release also benefits from SPEKK's trademark book-like presentation that in this case includes an eight-page insert featuring charming illustrations by Cecilia Afonso Esteves that effectively capture the spirit of Durand's creations.

November 2016

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Thank you very much Textura for your words and heartfelt listening! F.

A beautiful review by Textura (Canada)

Federico Durand: El idioma de las luciérnagas 

Desire Path Recordings

If ever a recording was made to be listened to at a particular time of day, it's Federico Durand's El idioma de las luciérnagas. And what time of day? Twilight, the peaceful time after sunset and before dark—or, as it's also called, gloaming, the word sometimes used in speaking of Richard Strauss's “Im Abendrot” (At sunset). Durand's choice of title, then, for his fourth album (and first on vinyl) is certainly apt as it translates as “The Language of Fireflies”—music less meant to be listened to in those hours when day turns to night than absorbed during the stillness that settles in during that time.

Don't be fooled by the seeming simplicity of the music: Durand's material is potent, as listeners familiar with his past releases on Spekk, Home Normal, and Own Records have discovered. For this thirty-seven-minute outing, he used music box, acoustic guitar, Tübingen-bells, tape-loops, and toy piano (among other things) to create the seven pieces and incorporated field recordings made in Muñiz, La Serranita, and Zürich. Durand even goes so far as to supply crickets, accentuating further not only the ideal time to listen to the recording but the location, too: outdoors, preferably a nature setting far away from and untainted by urban noise.

In fact, the atmospheres the field recordings contribute to the album are so central a component that at times it feels more like the musical elements are augmenting them rather than the other way around. In that regard, the cricket chirp that rhythmically persists throughout “Los niños izan las estrellas con hilos de plata” and “El idioma de las luciérnagas” is equal in importance to the respective settings' chiming bell tones and music box tinkles, while chattering birds and piano plinks assert themselves to similarly equal degrees during “Huemul.” While the peaceful and placid mood remains in place in all seven pieces, Durand wisely introduces variety by changing the focal points within the arrangements from piece to piece. In “Mumi,” for example, it's acoustic guitar whereas it's piano or music box elsewhere.

El idioma de las luciérnagas truly is music that encourages you to close your eyes and be transported by the music. Listening to the blurred tones softly whistling through the haze of “El espejo de mil años” evokes the calm of a late-July evening, while “Una ciudad al pie de las montañas” conjures the image of someone lying in a hammock on a summer day surrounded by birds and soothed by the sounds of soft music drifting into earshot from somewhere nearby.

October 2013

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Thank you very much Textura for this wonderful review! 

F.