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Jose Javier Castro — Melodía a Gianni Toti en Dos Partes
(Buh Records BR173, 2022, 7")

by Peter Thelen, Published 2023-01-03

Melodía a Gianni Toti en Dos Partes Cover art

José Javier Castro was a Peruvian artist and musician who began his work in the 80s and is best known for being the guitarist, singer, and de-facto leader of the experimental rock group El Aire, and a figure of the Lima underground scene. Beginning in the early 90s, he became involved with various projects centered in electronic experimentation, oriented more towards ambient and cosmic music for soundtracks, sound installations, and for his own rock band. Sadly, he left this world in 2022, leaving behind numerous archival recordings, of which this is the first to be published. Gianni Toti is an Italian artist, an active collaborator of the Túpac Amauta project, directed by Toti and produced at the Centro Internacional de Creación de Video (CICV). In 1999, for the second part of the Túpac Amauta project, Castro was invited as a resident artist at the CICV, which established a first-hand link with Toti, with whom he shared ideas regarding syntheatronic creation. The recordings at hand were composed in 2021 and inspired by Toti's various visions of music and aesthetics. An oddity of sorts, as 7” singles are typically the home of popular music, more commercial sounding songs, but the two parts of “Melodía a Gianni Toti” are anything but — instead more of an ambient sound sculpture borne of mysterious cavernous sheets of abstract color, light and darkness. The record is an outlier in another way as well: the A side is 45 RPM, a mere three minutes in duration, while the B side is 33 RPM, stretching out to nearly six minutes and far more varied and textural, with melodic fragments interwoven in the ambient textures. The physical product is being released in a limited edition of 250 copies on 7” vinyl, in both translucent blue and white, making it a true collector's item. And of course, it can be downloaded from the link below as well.

Filed under: New releases, 2022 releases

Related artist(s): Jose Javier Castro

More info
http://buhrecords.bandcamp.com/album/melod-a-a-gianni-toti-en-dos-partes

 

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