‘Arquitectura espectral’ is the second work by sound artist MRTN CSTR (Martín Castro) from Córdoba, Argentina for netlabel ‘Modismo’. In this EP made up of three tracks we are able to appreciate and enjoy once again digital atmospheres which are characteristic in his musical duty: gliding melodies, delicate rhythms, fine atmospheres, counterpoints. Martín builds his songs from technology, he experiments with creation of waveworms, sound synthesis, complex structures created with specialized sequencers and instruments for the software Reaktor. However, the results are far from being robotics or dehumanized because the structures (the ‘buildings’ of this architecture) become cozy, puzzling at the same time and profound, inviting us to inhabit them. Moving musical ideas based on algorithm and mathematical formulae from theory to practice tends to be a challenge that is rarely well resolved, as elevating a structure from paper to physical reality, and by ‘well resolved’ I mean experimenting the beauty of a good listening at last, the pleasure of self-abandonment to contemplation beyond the techniques or technologies utilized for its construction, which it is fully accomplished in ‘Arquitectura espectral’. As a good sculptor, Castro reveals the shape of his compositions from the development of sound layers that are added, subtracted, that interact and move around space, generating tensions and distensions, creating sounds-cells and sonic-organisms pieces that evolve in their route. This is the difference between the robot and its perfect and synchronized movements, versus the organic bodies-muscles with their subtle differences and their impossibility of doing exactly the same, the same way, all the time, where one could be more efficient than the other, but never more interesting to contemplate or, in this case, to listen.
Mika Martini, electronic musician. Santiago, July 2017