Marc Barreca: Recordings of Failing Light
Palace of Lights
When bonus tracks are included with a release, they typically number one or two. Marc Barreca, on the other hand, supplements the thirteen formal pieces on Recordings of Failing Light with seven, the bonuses (obtained via an included download card) totaling forty-three minutes and enough to constitute a full-length on their own. Such largesse testifies to the imagination and productivity of a composer who's been creating electronic music since the mid-‘70s. This latest Palace of Lights collection finds Barreca as engaged as ever in his idiosyncratic exploration of the sound possibilities associated with the experimental electronic genre. The perfect outlet for his projects, the label's been in his corner for decades, with 1980's Twilight, reissued on vinyl in 2018, one of the earliest Palace of Lights releases.
Recordings of Failing Light is representative of the pioneering work Barreca's been producing for years. For this project, he drew for inspiration from radiographs, negatives, and achromatic and sepia-toned photos, an interest intimated by the inverted photo treatments on the release's six-panel case. Working with modular and virtual synthesizers, granular processing, and samplers, Barreca manipulated the sounds of pianos, guitars, and other instruments in an attempt to create the sonic equivalent of a negative image. The dusty old piano intoning throughout “Frottage,” to cite one example, does convincingly suggest an old photograph rendered into sound form.
Even after so many releases, Barreca's music retains the capacity to startle. At the album's outset, for instance, “Candela” initially sets itself up as a subatomic examination of burbling electronic microsound; the track's arrestingly reconfigured, however, by the unexpected addition of acoustic guitar flourishes, a gesture that thereafter takes on an almost sitar-like quality when the elements converge and various treatments are applied. A second surprise quickly arrives when “Colorburst Part 1” is animated by an analog sequencer-styled pattern that suggests some weird commingling of dub-techno and Tangerine Dream's Phaedra. “Radiolucent” blusters and exhales forebodingly as a church organ warbles in the background and another rhythm pattern surfaces, this one evoking the dynamism of a gamelan ensemble's playing.
“Depth of Field” shifts the focus to a keyboard-centric exercise that blends acoustic piano details and heavily altered treatments into a shape-shifting flow. “Incidental Light” sounds like a softly flickering drone performed by orchestra musicians. When voices seep into the smear and warble of “Defocus,” the mix calls to mind the equal heady sound collage birthed by Terre Thaemlitz on 1997's Couture Cosmetique. Some of Recordings of Failing Light percolates like the inner workings of an extensively processed mechanism, yet however alien Barreca's material might seem on paper, it's less so in practice. Consider as evidence the guitar-laden tapestry “Focal Plane,” which is as warm as a campfire on a summer's eve. Each of these pieces registers as a provocative, lucidly constructed meditation distinct from the others. Spend an hour in Barreca's company and your appreciation for the range of sound possibilities will be greatly enhanced.December 2022