Árbol
Estados de excepción
SCORE: 8 out of 10
Peruvian artist, Árbol, debuts with an album in which not a second gets wasted; every moment feels crucial as it reinforces what comes next without losing its momentum, thus creating seamless transitions. Árbol lets everything break free with restrain and a perfect sense of timing.
Diego Faucheux’s artistic moniker couldn’t be more fitting. When nurtured correctly, an Árbol (Spanish for “tree”) slowly grows from a tiny seed into a gigantic, sturdy structure that is able to provide shade, comfort, and fresh air, but it is also a potentially destroying force when it grows too wild. In a way, Diego’s debut under 1049 records (a label he co-founded with Mauricio Moquillaza) feels like that: carefully planted stems that gradually reach lethal proportions, but never become too menacing because of how well they’re trimmed. The sonic textures have a certain label of harshness to them, but Estados de excepción always keeps its poise, never exploding or blasting the listener with a sudden burst of chaotic free-form static.
“Región perpleja” opens and paves the way for the rest of the album to move with ease. This track feels massive and immensely alive. The way it’s always moving forward, slowly unfolding into different and more complex textures, makes it feel as if it is evolving before us, going from a single cell organism to a fully formed being. It is a perfect example of how different frequency signals can coexist in a single piece without making it feel convoluted: the droning note from the beginning is ever-present, just changing texture, and all the sounds that eventually manifest feel like they’re organically emanating from it.
Each track feels like different movements from a single piece, but they also work independently; there’s no awkward flow between them, and none of them feel incomplete on their own. Most importantly, though, no second gets wasted throughout the whole album; all of the songs develop like one-take scenes in which we need to be paying attention even when nothing seems to be going on. Every moment feels crucial as it reinforces what comes next without losing its momentum, thus creating seamless transitions. Diego lets everything break free with restrain and a perfect sense of timing: it is well-choreographed sound.
“Transparencias” perfectly sets up a breaking point being between “Región” and the title track, providing a much-needed sense of familiarity and nuance to the album: veering more into ambient territory, we’re able to hear a guitar and some distant voices reminding us that this abstract and highly processed experience is still human at its core. This quickly fades once the closing track begins. Similar in structure as the first piece, it actually feels like an extension of it -without being redundant- which gives the album a circular narrative.
While doing some fact-checking, I reached out to Diego himself so he could let me know about the tools and techniques employed on the album. At one point, I even told him that I wish the album would have been a little longer, but after repeated listens, I agree with the decision to keep it -relatively- brief. More songs might have made the album become aimless after a while, and extending the tracks might have proven tiresome. For all the dynamism these pieces have, there’s only so much one can get out of sound exploration before it starts becoming an exercise in self-indulgence; fortunately, Árbol proves that you don’t have to stretch the hell out of your work to cause an impact. But, hey… if he ever decides to go down the Bull of Heaven-Natural Snow Buildings-Merzbow route, with an album spanning for more than six hours, I will gladly take the challenge.
