Damián Anache: Capturas del Unico Camino
Concepto Cero / Inkilino Records
In featuring four long-form settings of generative ambient material, Capturas del Unico Camino, the debut album by Argentine composer Damián Anache (born in Quilmes, Buenos Aires in 1981), is tailor-made for an installation presentation. For the hour-long work, Anache created an algorithm that enabled the computer to generate real-time manipulations of acoustic instruments (played by him), vocal utterances (also by the composer), synthetic sounds, and water recordings. It's not a sound work only, however: the software written by Anache also generates images, which gives Capturas del Unico Camino the potential scope of a true audiovisual experience.
The nearest possible analogue to Anache's recording might be Music For Airports. Like Eno's recording, Capturas del Unico Camino is a meditative work that drifts peacefully and which invites the listener to respond to it with both attention and distraction. Certainly the slow-motion stream of piano, acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, and percussion sounds in the opening part, “Paisaje Primero,” plays like a lost track from the Eno album, even if Anache's instrument choices differentiate his material from his better-known counterpart's. The connection is, if anything, strengthened when Anache's wordless vocal breaths arise during the sleepy second piece, “Paisaje Propio.” On the other hand, there's nothing on Eno's album that's anything like Anache's aquatic closer, sonically speaking.
Adding to the project's appeal, each of its four parts presents a different soundworld, with the acoustic instruments-heavy opener giving way to breathy vocalizing in the second, alien electronic textures in the third (“Paisaje Artificial”), and water dribble and bird chirps in the fourth (“Paisaje Natural”). Such dramatic shifts in sound design do much to keep the listener engaged, regardless of the glacial pace at which the parts unfold. The release also gets high marks on presentation grounds. Available as a download and in two physical forms, the first a modest CD package that comes with a fold-out score of the piece and the second a deluxe limited edition (150 copies) that houses the CD, four full-colour abstract art prints (with quotations by Satie, Cage, Eno, and others on the back), four recording-related info sheets, and the score within a small box (note, however, that all of the text is in Spanish).July-August 2015