- In the '80s, even with the country no longer in the shadow of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco, it was nearly impossible to learn much about Spanish electronic and experimental music. In the past few years, though, reissue labels outside of the country, like Music From Memory and Andy Votel's Dead Cert, have excavated music from some of Spain's finest composers, like Suso Sáiz and the duo Mecanfica Popular, bringing them to a new audience in a new century. Eugenio Muñoz, one half of Mecanica Popular, built a career as a respected producer and engineer in Spain in the early '80s, but it's the music he made as Randomize that caught the ears of selectors like JD Twitch and Trevor Jackson. Thanks to Spanish reissue label Equilibrio (an offshoot of Damián Schwartz's A Harmless Deed), Muñoz's adventurous debut solo album can now be more easily heard outside his homeland.
From the first minute of "Zero," you know you're dealing with a true alchemist of sound, someone abreast of artists like Chris & Cosey or Brian Eno and David Byrne. Then bursts forth "Movilidad Incesante," a dense, hallucinatory track for the adventurous DJ, full of rolling toms and unidentifiable thumps and squelches that spin around you in the stereo field like bats out of a cave.
From there, the album emphasizes certain sounds for each track, with Muñoz using loops and effects to highlight each one. A bashed drum and a horn blast lie at the center of "Brazil." Muñoz runs these elements through a heavy flange and beats them till they sound like mangled tin. "Subliminal" is more subdued and dreamy, with Muñoz burying a whisper beneath layers of industrial churn and processed gamelan tones. The latter tracks on the first side lose a bit of steam: "Guitarras" takes guitar strums and wrings them out, favoring process over musicality.
Given that Muñoz was taken with '60s avant-garde music and Pierre Schaeffer's theories on musique concrète, I'd guess the interlude of "Ionizacion" might be a nod to Edgard Varèse's "Ionisation." That leads into "Extranos Aparatos," another beat-heavy track full of cresting synths and what could be firecrackers going off in a paint can. In an alternate universe, "Radio Manila" could have been a pop tune. For the long closer, "La Armonia De Las Esferas," Muñoz moves at a more deliberate pace, with simmering cymbals washing across the track and the album's gentlest and most dramatic melody twinkling against the encroaching darkness.
Tracklist01. Zero
02. Movilidad Incesante
03. Brazil
04. Subliminal
05. Contemporize
06. Guitarras
07. Ionizacion
08. Extranos Aparatos
09. Ireland
10. Radio Manila
11. Randomize
12. La Armonia De Las Esferas