Max Bondi – M (CD)

Largely recorded over a single week in a small flat in Northern Spain, the record employs a vast array of sounds with such a tactile quality that at times it sounds as if the room itself is being played. From the subtly bristling tension and atmospheric double bass notes of Morendo, to the urgent and pulsating rhythmic layers of Volante!, the album plays like a dream both half-forgotten and lived-in all at once. The album reaches critical mass in A Desperate Threnody, where woozy interwoven drones mixed with shimmering percussion seem to drive inexorably towards a violent climax that instead yields to the most delicate and reflective piano motif.

Yet for all its calm and beautiful moments there is always a slight element of unease sitting below the surface and this side of the album reveals itself again as the wistful piano refrain is submerged in a growing wash of static that leads into the fragmented coda of the album’s closer, Elenco.

Notes and sounds rise and shimmer out of the gloom, conjuring textures sometimes so fragile and ethereal they could almost be smoke curling in the air, but always that dying computer crackle and deep foggy layers of dismembered drones rise up to pull you back in.