Mateo Hurtado

All The While Staying Perfectly Still

Mateo’s first release under the Secuencias Temporales label, is not so much about minimalism as it is about aptly managing limited resources.

While it has been theorized that repetition in music is needed, each listener’s experience with it may vary. Some people would rather go deaf than sitting through “Around the World”, but may have no problem enjoying some La Monte Young. However, the artists’ intentions, no matter the genre, seem to remain constant: there’s a desire to evoke a sense of immersion so intense for the listener to become one with those insistent patterns. But what separates good repetitive music from plain monotony, is the ability to engage and have the audience willing to pay attention to every detail each song has. No one wants their pieces to be described just as a “soothing hum” or as “good music to (do whatever, except listening to the songs)”, even less so when their main goal is to provide an almost sacred experience. Mateo Hurtado is one of those artists that aim for the spiritual.

Ritualistic music engages in heavy repetition to induce a trance-like state on the listener and open them up to an altered state of consciousness. If we take this premise and transpose it to a secular setting, we will be able to find that one of the genres that has been pushing this concept even further, is electronic music. The mix is rather interesting when one considers the two anachronistic elements being fused: tribal and inherently primitive rhythms being played and put together on cutting edge software, blasting through the speakers in an abandoned warehouse, an ever-standing symbol for the impatience of capitalism.

It seems fitting to mention an economic system, since All The While… -Mateo’s first release under the Secuencias Temporales label- is not so much about minimalism as it is about aptly managing limited resources. Hurtado uses the same formula throughout the album: a beat is surrounded by textures and sounds that rattle their way through the rhythmic patterns. Each track moves with urgency and tension, slowly surrounding themselves in a cloak of mysterious soundscapes that have an archaic feel. The low frequencies rumble from below and the modular textures sound like they’re sinking and emerging; crumbling and reforming.

The producer also aimed to achieve a sense of balance. The beats on All The While… don’t sound overly synthetic and the discrete confections that accompany them may even pass as field recordings, but there’s an unnatural vibe all throughout. Every piece on the album is tinged in a dark metallic glow, but they never end up feeling menacing or ominous, even when every texture seems to be coming from cavernous depths.

While the use of repetition, for the most part, does feel vital to the tracks, there’s a moment around the middle of the LP in which one might get the feeling that the artist has made his point already, rendering the rest of the album somewhat redundant. It is not a quality issue per se, as the production remains as pristine as on the previous tracks, but Mateo’s resilience to inject some nuance into his minimalist approach breaks the cycle of an, otherwise, very engaging experience. We can’t even make the argument for the album to be consumed as a single piece, because, other than the fact they all have the same structure, there’s almost no thread to seam these tracks together.

The high pitched ostinato in “Extending Into the Sky (Like Twigs)” shines like little bursts of light coming from a distance, as if we were approaching an exit from the depths in which we were trapped; the beat even moves with more freedom. Conceptual or not, it is a most welcomed detour, but it comes a little too late.

Where production is concerned, this is a highly satisfying experience. It sounds deep and tangible, and even at its most skeletal, the subtle sonic details provide a much needed backbone for the songs, as the beats may become a “soothing hum” after the third track. Hurtado shows skill to work with whatever few elements he chooses to have around, and his pieces do feel like they withhold something sacred within them. The whole album spirals inwards and outward, mimicking the cadence of a breathing exercise, and even if it becomes too exhausting all too quick, Mateo has showed us that he can endow life into his music by providing a body and a soul.