REMINESCENCES

During the last years I have not done any album due to physical health issues, but during all this time I have recorded some piano sketches now and then. I would not call this work an album, but a compilation of those "sketches". They are very simple, many of them differing from each other just by some nuances, but in a way or another, each of them captured something that was relevant for me, so I decided to simply release them all, and let them be.

ROSICRUCIAN CHANTS. Vol1

I have released a new piano album, "ROSICRUCIAN CHANTS", probably my favourite so far. Nine piano pieces of magick nature.

I am not Rosicrucian, but the primal conception of this album was boosted by the ceremonial Rosicrucian piano pieces Erik Satie composed back in his times, as well as the piano pieces created by Gurdjieff and De Hartmann. Those are influences that encouraged me to create this series, but didn't influence the way I composed it, for technically and in spirit these works are much more inspired by the burlesque, grotesque and scherzo-ish movements of Mahler, and occasionally by the expressive abstractions of Webern (two composers who for me are more "magick" than any magickal thing). In this album the burlesque and the solemn intermingle.

Mahler told this story about his childhood, when running away from home in a very depressive shock after having witnessed a violent episode. In such state it happened that he came across one of those street bands that played very light and burlesque-ish pieces. That made a big impact in Mahler's mind, and since then he expressed in many occasions tragic moods with a very burlesque and grotesque appearance. I feel that's a very magickal approach, therefore I used such spirit in many of these pieces.

https://alvarobarcala.bandcamp.com/album/rosicrucian-chants-vol1

RESONANT WASTELANDS

I have just released a new experimental piano album, called 'RESONANT WASTELANDS'.

Ten experimental piano pieces for which I used ten of my drawings as musical scores.

(Those drawings belong to my series 'The Landscape Below')

I made these compositions making use of tonality and atonality, having a especial focus on resonances.

Some of these pieces were recorded in early Autumn 2020, and some at the beginning of 2021.

SUN SYNERGIES WITH THE SUN

I have released this new piano album:

'Sun Synergies With The Sun'

In 2018 I made a little series of seven drawings titled "Sun Synergies With The Sun". This early Autumn 2020 I made seven piano pieces using those drawings as music scores, not in the sense of emulating the visual patterns of the drawings with sounds, but using the drawings as some type of remembrance, the vehicle with which remembering what made me make those images, so that using the same source to make the music. Basically I used the drawings to get in contact with the inner Sun and, once "there", letting the music flow.

In each track I have included the corresponding drawing.

Reflections On Blue

Thirteen piano works written between August and September 2020.

This album is compounded by some improvisations, some so called neo-classical works and some pieces composed in an "impressionist" way. Somehow a transit between my former piano work, which was mostly composed within the neo-classical spectrum, and the most recent path I've taken, which tends more for the borders between tonality and "free atonality". 

The fact that this album is a transit doesn't make it less definite than the others, quite the contrary. Actually it marks an inflection point in my music and life, a point where all the path travelled has been reviewed and wide new perspectives bloomed.

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IN DREAM

This is my new piano album, 'In Dream', which I have just released on bandcamp. A selection of the piano pieces I composed and recorded between Autumn 2019 and Spring 2020. It's been a long time I hadn't released a piano work. Wish you enjoy it.

THREE SONGS OF SUN-NOSTALGIA

Three piano atmospheric works I made in 2019, and gathered together around this poem I wrote during those days (which belongs to my book of poems "Sunwards"):

"Ghost immortal fragrance of Exile in bloom
That of moss-covered tombstones in gorgeous flame
For this Sarcophagus is hidden in the very center of the Sun
The very nucleus of Sun-shrine plasma burning -our star-
Point of highest temperature in this whole galaxy
Where all things imaginable are still just fire -within fire-
Till they become, blooming, in our red gold ecstasy
Till they fade again in dreary songs of Sun-Nostalgia"

-Álvaro Barcala-

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MADRID MERIDIAN

I am happy to announce the Russian label День забытой жизни (Day Of Life Forgotten) has released my new album "MADRID MERIDIAN" of my project Sebastian In Dream. This is the link to the album:

https://thedayoflifeforgotten.bandcamp.com/…/madrid-meridian

And this is the commentary they made of the album. I have roughly translated it from Russian: 

“Album of the Spanish composer, artist and poet Álvaro Barcala. Mystical psychogeographic music dedicated to Álvaro's hometown - Madrid. Both earthly and heavenly. In creating the work, Álvaro was guided by the idea of the Russian mystic Daniil Andreev about the duality of all the great cities, the existence of a supramundane reflection of each of them, a kind of Soul. An album created with minimal resources, however, sounds rich and timbre - saturated.

Before us is a majestic picture, permeated with intense poetic experience. The sensation of the merger of the city and the person making his way, as if between the earthly and heavenly state of his native city. The names of the compositions used English, Spanish and Russian. The composition "душа " is named in Russian because for Alvaro the sound of the word "душа " reflects the nature of the soul deeper than in any other language.

The album is decorated with Álvaro photographs made especially for this edition.”

Странствия: блуждания и погружения. Городские сны

I am happy to be part of this compilation, created by the label 'День забытой жизни' (Day Of Life Forgotten).

The theme of the compilation is the City. Different artists created sounds inspired by specific locations, and others about an abstract idea.

My contribution to this compilation is the track 'Kiev', which I made under the name of my project 'Sebastian In Dream'. 

In this track I made a progressive sound impression about that city. During my firsts days there I could perceive a lot of energy, a big mixture of architectonical styles, different influences from different civilizations, etc. But as weeks passed by I could feel the deep sadness that dwells within that city. A sadness that subtly beats within the streets, buildings, parks... This progressive impressions are reflected in the track.

(When I arrived to Kiev, in the airport the security guards started to check my synths, and they moved accidentally all the knobs and settings of them. I composed the first part of the track with those random settings provoked by the security guards. I just enjoyed the dadaist circumstance to create the sound intro).

THE ADVENT OF ANGELS

'The Advent Of Angels". Somehow a second part of "A Hundred Seas Of Light". Mostly inspired

by the Persian Sufi poet Attar.  With these albums I am kind of merging modern classical music with experimental, sometimes noise, stuff.

RUSTY LIGHT OF EXPIRED STARS

I forgot to post here a very treasured little album I made last year, "Rusty Light Of Expired Stars", for my project Sebastian In Dream.  

EPHEMERA

I have released a new piano album, titled 'EPHEMERA'. It is a selection of all the piano recordings I've made during 2019.

The image of the cover is a picture I took in Kiev of a piano that was abandoned in a park (Mariinskyi park). I used to take daily walks this year around that place.

ORPHIKÁ. "ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD. VOL II."

This album is inspired in the Orphic "Totenpass" that is written in the Orphic Gold tablets, especially in the gold leaf of Peleteia (300-200 BC), which says something like:

“I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, but of Heaven is my birth:

this you know yourselves. I am parched with thirst and perishing:

give me quickly chill water flowing from Mnemosyne lake”

This Totenpass was meant to be recited after death, as means of showing to the judges of the Underworld that the person had been initiated in the Orphic/Dionysiac mysteries, and was meant as a “password”. Among many other things, this totenpass evokes Remembrance, remembrance of the divine-heavenly nature that dwells within all of us.

The four pieces of this albums are created and recorded in a single session, one for each piece, in a kind of flowing improvisation. There are some few occasional "incidents" and "errors" present in the recording. I decided to leave them, despite they would be easily edited, so to respect the very nature of the moments in which these sounds were created.

WHITE CROSS. 'APOCALYPTIC EXPECTATIONS'

My new album 'Apocalyptic Expectations' (from my project White Cross) has just been released by the Russian label based in Moscow День забытой жизни (Day Of Life Forgotten). The whole album is in the following link:

https://thedayoflifeforgotten.bandcamp.com/album/apocalyptic-expectations

Многоплановая, глубокая, имеющая серьёзную сакрально-философскую основу работа мадридского композитора, художника и литератора Álvaro Barcala. По мысли автора - "Apocalyptic expectations" основан на концепции апокалипсиса, не как разрушения, а как смерти мира и самого профанного «Я», которое должно возродиться в мире и в существенном «Я». Для этого музыкальный процесс - это минимализм, минимализм как аскетизм или аскетизм как минимализм. Звук альбома на стыке эмбиента, индастриал-нойз и неокласики. Мощь, глубина и объёмность звучания, при минимуме выразительных средств. Удивительное сочетание/сосуществование прозрачно-меланхолических гармонико-мелодических частей и наплывов инфернального скрежета. Прекрасно скомпонованная и очень убедительно звучащая запись.

A HUNDRED SEAS OF LIGHT

I have just released this album, 'A Hundred Seas Of Light', a homage to my beloved Persian Sufi Poet Attar (Also known as Farīd ud-Dīn). 

In this occasion I have merged different genres, from experimental electronics to modern classical, always following a sense of poetics.

Whole Album in the following link:

https://alvarobarcala.bandcamp.com/album/a-hundred-seas-of-light

ORPHIKÁ. 'ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD. VOL I. JOURNEY'

This is the new album I have released as Orphiká, 'Orpheus In the Underworld. Vol I. Journey'.

A musical journey through the Underworld, from the death of the mundane world, from the death of the mundane self, so to be reborn again in the Real. 

https://orphika.bandcamp.com/album/orpheus-in-the-underworld-vol-i-journey

SEBASTIAN IN DREAM. 'AS THE SUN DIES IN THE SKYLINE

Happy to announce my new experimental/ambient/noise project 'Sebastian In Dream' has been released in the Russian label 'День забытой жизни' (The Day Of Life Forgotten), being 'As The Sun Dies In The Skyline' my first album with this project. You can listen and download the whole album in the following link:

https://thedayoflifeforgotten.bandcamp.com/album/as-the-sun-dies-in-the-skyline

The conception of this album started on an evening of this ending winter in which I went to a suburbian/industrial area of my city, Madrid. There I took a long walk during dusk, while I could see how literally the Sun was setting in the city skyline. During that walk I made some field recordings and wrote some sentences trying to catch the numinous spirit of the area and how that spirit interacted with me. With those sentences I composed a poem, and each verse of that poem is the title of each track. The whole album is a sound poem with which I try to make manifest the numinous spirit of my city's suburbia and how you become part of that spirit as you walk through those  streets.


 

Updating

I have to make a big update of my drawing/painting works in this blog, basically my artwork of the last years. Instead I have posted periodically my musical work here, but there are several drawing books and series of paintings that are not yet updated on this page. But you can see some few hints and few examples of my new work on my instagram page: 

https://www.instagram.com/alvaro.barcala/

Updates will come soon, nevertheless.

Erotic Melancholia. -Piano Solo Album-

I am happy to announce I have released a new piano solo album, 'Erotic Melancholia'. 

Twelve piano solo works about the eroticism of melancholia. 
I've conceived melancholy as a bare sensual phenomena that let all naked emotions show in their most pure and honest state. 

These piano pieces lack of decoration, they are minimal, they are undressed, just covered by thin transparent veils you can see through. I've conceived eroticism in this sense at the time of making this minimalistic music.

DHALGREN

I've just released with my project Orphiká this one-track album, inspired by the novel 'DHALGREN', written by Samuel R. Delany.

20 minutes of improvised harsh atmospheric drone over which I played a piano improvisation too.

Available here: 
https://orphika.bandcamp.com/album/dhalgren

SACRED EROSION. Vol 2

In the last few weeks I am releasing most of the music projects I've been working on during the whole year. Many releases in a short time, but they need to see the light before I start with new things in this new year. So here it is the second volume of 'Sacred Erosion', for my project Orphiká.

THE LANDSCAPE BELOW

I have released in bandcamp the first volume of 'The Landscape Below', for my project Orphiká. 

The tracks of this album are complementary with the paintings I've been making with the same name.