Video reseña de "El idioma de las luciérnagas" por Was Ist Das?

I invite you to see this video review HERE.

Thank you very much Was Ist Das? for the lovely images and words!

F.

A beautiful review by Cyclic Defrost (Australia)

"El idioma de las luciérnagas" by Cyclic Defrost

Presumably sometime on the tour, with Tomoyoshi Date in Europe 2012 to promote the collaborative project Melodia’s album Saudades, numerous field recordings were made, some in Zurich. There are recordings from Muñiz and La Serranita in Argentina which form a good part of this album. That’s speculative, but writing about abstract music is hardly a game of facts. You can say it is composed of music box, acoustic guitar, Tübingen-bells, toy piano, tape-loops and that Durand manipulates the walkman, minidisc, DS and Electroharmonix 2880 stereo multi-track looper. But that’s just the kit list. Mastering has been performed by James Plotkin, an American guitarist known more for his work with death metal, grindcore and post metal but whose has a wide body of interesting collaborations.

EL idioma de las luciérnagas (The language of fireflys) is what one might describe as an example of environmental sound art. It amps up the field recordings, specifically the ones containing crickets, bells, birds, water, winds and then goes to town on various procession instruments and their looping possibilities building up a wall of tones. It is simple and effective as a strategy and depends greatly on Durands well-tuned ear that pushes the tones brightness to the brim with a deftness that has them absorbed into the organic surroundings. As if they were naturally there. Such plays with chimes and toy piano are an organic artifice but demonstrate that Durand has an affinity or draws a good deal of inspiration from nature as have his previous albums and the collaboration with Tomoyoshi Date. There are moment in the album where the tones are drawn out into drones and layered and manipulated before others overlay and produce different resonant possibilities. A guitar track Mumi offers a hesitant and scitterish use of the looping technique and becomes quickly intertwined with bells, creaking and static sounds. A favourite is the title track El idioma de las luciérnagas rendered with a unremittingly melancholy music box that draws out its tones and adds water and cricket field recordings. It is sort of a wonderfully beautiful sadness. Which sums up the conveyed emotion of some of the album which is mostly forms of environmentally constructed sound scapes.

Innerversitysound

*

Thank you very much Innerversitysound & Cyclic Defrost for this wonderful review! F.

"El idioma de las luciérnagas" in the Top 20 Drone Records Of 2013 by Anti-Gravity Bunny (USA)

Estoy muy feliz porque mi disco "El idioma de las luciérnagas" aparece entre los 20 discos del 2013 destacados por la increíble página ANTI-GRAVITY BUNNY (USA).

Muchas gracias!

Hello! I am very happy because my new album "El idioma de las luciérnagas" is in the Top 20 Drone Records made by wonderful ANTI-GRAVITY BUNNY.

Thank you very much!

*

8. EL IDIOMA DE LAS LUCIERNAGAS (Desire Path Recordings)

“…a record of subtle complex sounds, finding wonder in the smallest audio spaces and turning a regular peaceful morning into a world of bright white bliss.”

TOTALLY upping his game from the last record I heard him on, the collab with Nicholas Szczepanik as Every Hidden Color, this one takes the field recording thing to heart, with crickets gently chirping under chimes, which I assume are being played intentionally, but come off as though you’ve stumbled upon one of life’s beautiful accidents. Everything is played with such grace that it seems natural & effortless, something I haven’t heard from very many artists.

"El idioma de las luciérnagas" reviewed by Seek Sick Sound (France)

LE LANGAGE DE LUCIOLES

Des carillons emmitouflés de crissements de criquets et de bruissements de feuilles d’arbres s’agitent paisiblement pendant que la nature gagne un repos bien mérité. Le pouls ralentit tandis que le souffle s’adoucit parmi les réverbérations éclairées perdues dans l’immensité de la nuit. Le temps, lui, perd de sa signification, et s’échappe de cette nouvelle réalité peuplée d’insectes luminescents.
Le langage des lucioles, traduction littérale d’El Idioma De Las Luciérnagas, dernière œuvre en date de Federico Durand, se niche directement dans ces cavités inexplorées de l’imaginaire, neurasthéniques tout en restant hypnotiques. Publié sur le très sélectif Desire Path Recordings avec environ une sortie tous les six mois, ce dernier long format est disponible en vinyle et en digital depuis septembre et fait suite au féérique El Libro De Los Árboles Mágicos paru l’année dernière sur Home Normal ou encore au nostalgique Saudade, issu de sa collaboration avec Tomoyoshi Date et chroniqué ici plus tôt dans l’année.

*

Please, read this wonderful review HERE.

*

Merci beaucoup Seek Sick Sound and Raphael Lenoir! F.

Beat Magazine (Germany)

Buenas tardes amigos! Comparto la reseña-haiku de "El idioma de las luciérnagas" aparecida en la revista "Beat Magazine" (Alemania), escrita por Tobias Fischer.

This beautiful, little-haiku-like review of "El idioma de las luciérnagas" was made by talented Tobias Fischer!

Dankeschön!

F.

A beautiful review of "El idioma de las luciérnagas" by Music Won't Save You (Italy)

FEDERICO DURAND "El Idioma de las luciérnagas" 

DESIRE PATH RECORDINGS (USA)

By Music Won't Save You

C’è un filo di continuità tra la passeggiata di Federico Durand nel bosco incantato di “El libro de los árboles mágicos” e le sette nuove istantanee raccolte in “El idioma de las luciérnagas”. Con la danza inafferrabile delle scintille si concludeva appunto il lavoro precedente e al loro fluttuare fugace e irregolare è concettualmente dedicata l’ultima creazione dell’artista argentino, ancora frutto di modulate intersezioni tra field recordings e minute particelle elettroacustiche.

Benché gli elementi che formano “El idioma de las luciérnagas” non differiscono in maniera significativa rispetto a quanto in precedenza realizzato da Durand, dalla sua magica scatola sonora fuoriesce questa volta un universo di loop, note acustiche ed esili filtraggi elettronici organico e coeso come non mai. Ne risultano brevi sinfonie naturalistiche costellate da suoni evanescenti e magici come scintille, dotate di fascino imperscrutabile come lucciole in una sera primaverile, pervase da un romanticismo che nei rugiadosi frammenti di pianoforte e nella brillante eco dei campanellini trova perfetto complemento a soffi ambientali spontanei e leggeri come un respiro.

È la natura che vive e si trasforma quella impressa da Durand nei solchi del solo vinile nel quale è pubblicato il disco, con una delicatezza che non necessita di ricorrere a iterazioni droniche né a progressioni ambientali. “El idioma de las luciérnagas” è piuttosto una fedele rappresentazione della pacifica e irripetibile meraviglia di un singolo istante di luce, in completa simbiosi tra gli elemento.

*

Grazie mille Music Won't Save You per la bella recesione! F.

"El idioma de las luciérnagas" reviewed by Anty-Gravity Bunny (USA)

"El idioma de las luciernagas" by Anti-Gravity Bunny (USA)

I first heard about Argentina’s finest Federico Durand through his superb collaboration with Nicholas Szczepanik under the guise of EVERY HIDDEN COLOR. This debut LP of Durand’s (translated to The Language Of The Fireflies) takes that pristine sound from LUZ and amplifies it to a level of pure magic. This is a record of subtle complex sounds, finding wonder in the smallest audio spaces and turning a regular peaceful morning into a world of bright white bliss. Intimate field recordings of wildlife chatter and drifting chimes are in perfect company amidst minimal tonal shimmer, delicate softness, humble piano twinkling, and emotional dreams. This is a damn near perfect drone record, kicking introverted euphoria into uncharted territory. As is all things with Desire Path, El Idioma is limited, so don’t sleep on this.

*

Thank you very much Anti-Gravity Bunny for this heartfelt review!

F.

Mumi

Mumi, the cat.

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

*

Thank you very much Textura for this wonderful review! 

F.

"El idioma de las luciérnagas" reviewed by A Closer Listen

A Closer Listen

Pale blue skies start to turn a shade darker, reflecting the failing light against the prism of pale blue eyes. Pearl-coloured gemstones cool underneath the coasting clouds. A touch of dusky grey filters in, settling beside the river of chiming intervals that swim between beautiful pools of clear light.

There is a hushed clarity to the series of chiming notes, each one casting a unique aura of entering light. It also demonstrates that tranquility is possible with several intervals on the go, and that peace is not restricted to a single drone or the traditional school of slow-developing ambience.

El Idioma De Las Luciérnagas (The Language of Fireflies) is an incredibly still listen. Only the quiet rustle of crickets in the brush and the singing chorus of birdsong make a distinct sound, and not even the breeze that kisses the rotating wind chimes has the capacity to ruffle loose feathers.

The dusky tones settle beside still, serene waters. An indigo swish of light is joined by another as the fireflies come out to play. A note is a spark of light that lingers in the air like a photographic after-image. The dash of light never remains in any one place for long.

As dusk approaches the bank, so too do moonlit tones. The cool, placid sound of the piano is affectionate, mirroring the earlier chimes with notes that easily sink into one another, creating beautiful arpeggios in the process. Premature in their arrival, the new interval then becomes the primary note as the previous note vanishes into the black light. The relationship between each interval and its subsequent effect on the music is lovingly pursued.

Now comes the nocturnal period, just after the quiet shimmer of dusk. The light of the day has departed, and the shushed echo of the insect calling is all that is left; an authentic kind of reverb. Among the placid ponds and thick reeds, the acoustic breeze stirs the air with a beautiful melody. The creaking of a wooden chair adds the all-important authenticity to the recording, while the deep bass notes ring out from the sound-hole in perfect harmony.

United with the dance of fireflies is the scent of the guitar’s wood and the shape of a Coca Cola bottle resembling her smooth body. The touch of a harmonic or two is a soft, light bell on the cusp of the dark. It’s the quiet introduction of the man-made, physical instrument, originally constructed out of nature, now at one with nature. It comes in peace.

“Los Cristales Soñadores” is a chiming loop of glowing mystery that becomes gloriously lost in the endless beauty of it all. It isn’t just the language of fireflies. It is the language of love. Argentinian Federico Durand narrates a sublime fairy-tale, one that we are all looking out for; where the fireflies lived happily ever after. 

James Catchpole

Thank you very much A Closer Listen and James Catchpole for the heartfelt review! F.