Laura Luna Castillo | Folksonomies
Cudighi Records (CS, DL)
Strings and no-input in unison – the first track, ‘I See But Say Nothing’ of Folksonomies by Laura Luna Castillo takes the listener somewhere between a carnival and a forest cove. Tidal wafts of electronic sine waves and disguised dub are paired with soft strings – ticking down in a minimalist reduction into singular notes. In Folksonomies, “each work has a distinct personality that’s expertly refined, ripe with dimensions and contradictions as the music grows, festers, and expands, ultimately building to create a larger narrative”.
This is not the practice of on-line tagging and organizing as in a certain given definition of ‘folksonomy,’ however, by ‘Combining synthesizer and 8-bit bloops with stringed instrumentation and nature recordings’, the artist engages the audience within the sub-context of being stranded on an island; through live discovery and descriptive process, the album maintains a Darwinian charm.
The transmutational possibility within these tracks lie within the listeners’ aptitude for relishing minute variants which mutate and evolve within one’s very attention. It’s not exactly lofi. It’s not exactly drone. There’s a patience certainly threaded throughout. In each track, a narrative to simplicity and complexity intermingling – a slow dance with the listener who is wooed and led into immersion with the tenderness of the rapt composer.
I listened to the album about two-thirds through before I took a look at the artwork (which depicts the album track-by-track) by Sasha Laskowsky. My first reaction was to frame what I was listening to into a more freak-folk mindset. ‘I Breathe Trust’ was playing and I recalled Chad Van Gaalen’s melting cartoons and lyric falsettos. Then, there’s a moment unique in the album’s tonal seduction as ‘Eight Eyes of Anticipation’ strikes its Zeldaic intro. Suddenly the light breaks forth and the cybernetic aspects so ubiquitous in contemporary existentia become swaddled in good humor – not to the point of hilarity by certainly exposed. What follows is the serene sincerity of ‘The Memory of the Eternal Now.’ Other than a few moments of what sounds like nails being ground on an industrial file, ‘I Smooth Claws’ closes the alum in a ghostly aquatic lull. Into the depths, the bubbles of electronic echoing bass put us into a final ease and relative euphoria.
Laura Luna Castillo is a multimedia artist with an international resume whose work ‘explores the mechanisms of memories, imagination and the perception of inhabited spaces through multiple angles and temporalities.’ Explore https://www.lauralunacastillo.net for other works including virtual reality, installation and sculpture.
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