Composer and sound recordist Francisco López operates in an area where music and sound merge. On earlier albums he processed recordings from nature and buildings to arrive at this curious intermediate zone. Although the sources of the sounds are readily recognizable, the overall effect is undeniably musical because of López’ arrangement and placement of the material. On Untitled #275 (most of his pieces and albums go without a title) he has approached this from the opposite angle. It consists of an acoustic and an electroacoustic movement—the first played on a prepared piano, the second a reworking of this material with sound-processing tools. With its rich variety of sonorities and its percussive quality, the piano is an ideal instrument for his purposes; and Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt, with whom López developed the piece, is an ideal performer. He exploits the sonic capacities of the piano to the full, from pounding basses to subtle colourings and differentiated dynamic layers. Out of these materials López has created a spacious sound world of amazing depth, detail, and complexity, where distant silvery hammering may reside in booming bell-like expanses. It is music, but it’s also an environment—an unearthly, phantasmagorical landscape of sound.
