Elite Border decided not making it easy for the ones approaching this behemoth opus. A hypothetical eight-hour-working shift turned into a Julio Cortázar like sonic coven. Almost 500 minutes, to be approached in any order, from a series of listening instructions. The album (?) refers to intermingled references. There are glimpses of 1980s indie cassette underground, industrial experiences, but also from concrète and electroacoustic, “serious” music (so to speak); monologues, certain melodic atmospheres diluted to sheer abstraction: noise as raw material and aesthetic discipline (once again).

More than experimenting, there is a leaning towards discipline in our environments’ habitable chaos. A continuum marked by timelessness and an all-encompassing sonic feeling anywhere. Everywhere. Sections filled with rock vigor or oozing city folklore, replacing rural charm with factory rattling and urban atmosphere. Sheer electricity outbursts mingled with brittle notes, while strings introducing glossy melancholy shades. Since this is a proposal based on a dual concept, provided by Pedro Pablo Pedroso (Baltazár) and Pablo Enelotromundo García, it is extended by several guests, weaving an almost unrecognizable skein of instrumental voices. A passage towards ubiquity, the nerve of a present time in crisis.

Where Throbbing Gristle, Stockhausen, Ron Geesin, Merzbow, Kagel, Alain Neffe, Ground Zero current heirs, and any barrier-free sound sniper from last century onwards meet, Elite Border has found a realm between listening inevitability and the dense architecture of dreams. It takes time to face their “Jornada Laboral N°1”, but the imagery comes out startlingly alive from the experience.

Humberto Manduley López
Escritor y crítico musical cubano / Cuban writer and music critic.
(México. Febrero / February 2021)