works by leonardo rosado • Posts Tagged ‘Electroacoustic’

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LEONARDO ROSADO - Soaking Wet

released by Rural Colours (2011)

Taken from the Opaque Glitter sessions the ep Soaking Wet is a short story of lovers missing encounters, living in cheap hotels and empty coffee houses, on a wet rainy day.

Soaking wet
With arms like thin branches
Wide open to the sky
Until everything washed away
In the distance

Waiting for you to pass by
At exactly the same time and same place
Saying numb goodbyes
Over and over
At the same cafes and the same vacant hotels

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LEONARDO ROSADO - Studies on Solitude
released by Twisted Tree Line (2011)

Rosado’s first release on Twisted Tree Line, for me, is one of his best works to date. Rosado continues his exploration into detailed sound design and ambience over the course of these five tracks that fit snuggly onto one 3″ CDr. There is a strong sense of aloneness on opener Study on Kindness until some inviting chimes fall into the mix with sparse piano sounds, greeting the listener after three or so minutes of dense and dark sounds. Paying attention tot he sounds unfolding in Rosado’s works is always key to enjoying them, and in Studies on Solitude it is always evident that there are a myriad of things going on a once. The opening of Study on Doubts and Misconceptions presents a lovely ambient haze with what I make out to be soft percussive tones, off tune guitar buried deep underneath, distant piano and several field recordings perhaps of a body of water coming into contact with the hand of a human being. While all this is happening the ambience grows louder and is filled out with more piano to heighten the atmosphere even more. Once again, I believe this to be among his best works to date, the attention to detail is stunning and the tracks themselves are brilliant meditations on the concept of being alone, possibly embracing that and understanding the concept of what it is to be in a state anomie., and then moving on from that.

Review at Whatever Takes your Fancy

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LEONARDO ROSADO - Opaque Glitter

released by FeedbackLoop (2011)

Leonardo Rosado has already a stable and bright musical career that has captivated many listeners. His latest release, Opaque Glitter, shows a wide range of sensorial, urban and abstract landscapes. In his music there is always a contrast between the harshness of noise and the sweetness of melody that mirrors the intricacies of life itself.

The first track in the album, “Leaving and staying”, has the melancholic and distant warmth of an intimacy that takes me back to Andrei Tarkovsky’s onirically strange and transcendentally beautiful atmospheres. These also felt in “It Ends Here”, permeated by the sweetness of a sporadic theremin line and the contrasting harshness of pulsating white noise. In the second track, a delicate vibrato sings itself among the progressively increasing noises, sweeping the listener into the furrows of a multilayered surface. This same graceful fragility is heard in the stringed love that is told in the next track, a love that unfolds itself and that gets more and more tangible amongst the everyday clatter. The hidden melodies of Rosado remind us that the solidity of life provides an escape to those who dare to hear behind. The hypnotic drones in “Dancing and Falling” transport us into a more abstract level, showing an upward pull that is counteracted by the centripetal force of the more discrete sounds that anchor it to the ground, without subtracting any lightness to it. A different lightness, more palpable and oriented towards the wonders of the exterior, is perceived in “The Wind Blowing in my Face”. In the last track in the album, “Soft Like Leaves Falling”, the touch of dry leaves leads us to the melancholic and sweet farewell. In it, the love-vibrating melodies sung in previous tracks are more perceptible and become more real through the metallic puncta that pierce the song.

On the whole, Opaque Glitter is a complex and heterogeneously coherent album that shows some of Leonardo Rosado’s best tricks to dazzle the listener. Both old followers of his work and newcomers will enjoy this masterpiece. Besides, I’m sure he will keep filling us all with wonder in his future works.

Jessica Aliaga Lavrijsen

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LEONARDO ROSADO - Dream On

released by AudioGourmet (2011)

LISTEN/DOWNLOAD HERE

Next on Audio Gourmet we welcome aboard Leonardo Rosado, an artist and curator of the Feedback Loop netlabel. Aside from running Feedback Loop, Leonardo’s main musical focus explores the collision between sound, poetry and everyday life by using automatic expressions that he likes to call ‘wordsoundscapes’. The construction of his music pieces expose daily life happenings that are individual and at the same time universal; it has a strong sense of suggesting a pause to think about our actions and our surroundings. Words and sounds have different meanings depending on the listener, but only if they take the time to delve into the complexity of their own stimuli.

His past discography includes work released on the likes of his own Feedback Loop label as well as Test Tube, Relaxed Machinery, Public Spaces Lab, XS Records and Clinical Archives

In addition to the sounds you can hear in ‘Dream On’, here is a collection of short poems for each track that offering an insight into the concept behind this project:

REBUILDING THE DREAM here I am trying to fit old memories in new clothing forcing my rebirth

DREAM ON feeling the heartbeat like a new born seeing through belly skin

WIPED OUT when I hear that ringing I know that nothing will be left of me nothing worth singing about

SLEEPLESS MURMUR turning around in bed counting sheep closing the eyes in darkness. nothing will stop the unrest the murmur of change

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LEONARDO ROSADO - for r
released by relaxed Machinery (2010)
LISTEN/BUY HERE

The title ‘for r’ would suggest a work being dedicated to something or someone and on the surface it appears to be a vague and ambiguous bestowment. Leonardo Rosado chooses not to define what or who ‘r’ may be, however, after spending much time with the three tracks contained within I have come to love the mystery that the title embodies.

Listening to the sounds within is awe inspiring and thus Rosado’s patience while constructing these brooding, spacious and fluid pieces is to be praised. A spectrum of emotions flow from the music conjuring childlike imagery with echoing bells, deep unease via augmented drones and bass frequencies, and a wonderful sense of acceptance through the warmth and fragility of the sounds.

Rosado’s strength is his undeniable sense of depth, combining organic sounds of water, experimental percussion, shuffling and friction with processed and controlled drones all culminating in a wonderfully balanced form. The synthesis of nature and technology present here is what makes these recordings so rewarding time and time again.

Regardless of the ambiguity the title presents, Leonardo Rosado makes a poignant dedication, a dedication that not only celebrates the warmth in life and the beauty we are given, but also the darkness, the unpredictability and the ugly facets of existence.

Alex Stretton