Álvaro Domene

Iluso Records presents Collisions and Contradictions, two new solo albums by Álvaro Domene. A highly visual duo of albums that serve detail for the listener, or rather viewer, a highly dynamic cross sectional view behind conscious narrative and into the almost dream logic like channels of thought formation. Collisions unfolds the narrative through the most amorphous and jagged of structures that detail for us the subliminal workings of conflict, synthesis, and perseverance. With Contradictions picking up this dreamlike narrative, in all its disarray and synchrony, it serves to introduce optimism to the brutality of Collisions through a heightened sense of splendor and playfulness that acts well to contrast, or contradict, its partner. Leaving us with this vast and highly emotional duo through a peek behind the veil of conscious narratives as they struggle to grapple the themes of struggle, comradery, confusion, and perseverance through a whirling shift that is equal parts dance and maelstrom. - Ulises Tello

Domene explains some of the background concepts: “These two new works represent the natural evolution of the concepts documented on Rapid Influx [2023]. The main difference is that while on Rapid Influx I worked with guitar and drum computer at once, as one instrument, on these two the process was altered. I recorded the guitar parts in their entirety as full takes and then recorded the drum computer afterwards. Compositionally, Collisions is quite influenced by death metal but actively avoiding as many cliches as possible. Instrumental roles, flexibility of time and multi-directionality of gestures, melodies, modular motivic blocks that get manipulated through the piece, are some of the compositional elements documented in it.

One aspect that has been augmented and furthered forward significantly in relation to previous works is the emphasis on time linearity manipulation as it relates to form. I often hear melodies and other musical events simultaneously happening at different tempi, range, direction, stereo location, and correlation to each other at both the micro and the macro level, resembling the self-replicating nature of fractal maths at different magnitude of perspectives. What this entails, for instance, is that the same melody might take the form of a full 5 minute piece but also occur in one single instance and anything in between, and also be manipulated in different ways [pitch transposition of many kinds, tempo, retrograde, granular, rhythmic displacement and mutation, etc] while retaining the structural codependency of all the iterations of said line and its inner cells. Melodies can become a web of decentralized musical cells that have an interdependent logic and structure.

Another example is my focus on the orchestral aspect of my solo work, specifically the aim of perceived size, impact and dimension of the music as you listen to it through speakers or live. I work really hard on crafting a sound that comes across as huge as it possibly can be while retaining crystalline detail making full use of the stereo field as much as possible, aiming for three-dimensionality in my guitar sound by creatively using several types of delays, LFOs, and mid-side processing, deep mixing, among other techniques, which contribute to a listening experience through which the audience might distinguish the width, depth, movement and height of the guitar as if it was some kind of electric and synthetic orchestra.

Both albums come out of the same compositional and performance processes but the production choices are a bit different. Collisions is more unapologetically metallic, and Contradictions has more elements from so-called IDM and other experimental electronic musics, and of course jazz. They intersect at the point where I strive to expand on the possibilities of guitar and percussion centric sound design using a lexicon derived from years of deep study and practice of jazz, metal, and classical music.”