"Where Toral abstracted chord changes from "Take the 'A' Train" and "I Got Rhythm" to use as the music's backbone on Spectral Evolution, with Traveling Light, he places the songs' melodies at the center, clearly articulating, layering, and expanding upon them. Where Spectral Evolution was glowing and gaseous, rendering its harmonic underpinnings all but unrecognizable, on Traveling Light he often gives us clear, unmistakable renditions of well-known melodies, elongating each note and letting phrases unfold at a snail's pace."
"Rafael Toral is an inveterate explorer. The Portuguese musician has ventured into multiple musical worlds throughout his long career, each more elaborate than the last. Ambient guitar albums like 1994's Sound Mind Sound Body and 1995's paid close attention to the gradual changes of long-held tones. When he left his guitar behind and began his Space Program, he fashioned an orchestra of self-made electronic instruments that buzz, chirp, and warble like interstellar transmissions."
Rafael Toral progressed from 1990s ambient guitar records to a Space Program of self-built electronic instruments that produce buzzing, chirping, interstellar textures. Spectral Evolution incorporated harmonic ideas from the 20th-century jazz songbook, abstracting chord changes as structural material. Traveling Light foregrounds melodies from jazz standards, articulating and layering them while elongating notes and stretching phrases into slow-moving drones. The album reimagines familiar tunes as drone etudes, combining patient pacing and sustained tones with intricate internal weaving and a balance between ambient drift and focused, meditative intensity.
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