Drag City / USA / RE 2018
"Wave Field" ends a period in which i was interested in writing music with notes. It became evident that i wanted to work with sound, with modulations and fluctuations impossible to notate. This was a major shift to a different way of thinking, as i found notes to be conceptual abstractions, which are to be later served by sounds.
Around that time (1993) i got to see Nirvana in Lisbon and the supporting band was the Buzzcocks. The venue's acoustics were so bad that all i could hear was an amorphous roar. While my attention drifted from this otherwise boring set, i began listening to that unarticulated stream of electric sound and found it extremely interesting and inspiring, a kind of liquid, abstract flux of rock sound. The room's resonance was literally liquefying this rock sound, in a way that plugged directly into my fascination for Alvin Lucier's piece I am Sitting in a Room, turning it into a kind of Rosetta stone, resonance being the common key. I wanted to consolidate these new ideas on distillation of rock and bring them down in a form of ambient music. Nirvana were great and actually sounded good, but when i got out, chatting with friends about the concert, i was already dreaming of Wave Field.
While i was listening to the final mixes, i was amazed to discover Wave Field became a totally different thing if played at different levels. I was aware it could be ambient (played softly), but when i tried playing it really loud, i discovered a dense, powerfully charged stream of electricity. It's definitely not ambient, but something intensely hypnotizing. One can physically feel the wave.
Recently i heard the Wave Field CD and realized it could actually sound deeper and more spacious. This version is the result of a thorough remastering work, and it now sounds quite closer to what i was hearing in my head back in 1993.
Rafael Toral, Regada 2017