Pau Torres — Hostile

In a wooden cabin in Canada, Pau Torres (from Barcelona, formerly in Le Diablo Marichi) constructed an intrigueing 55 minutes of music with a broad range of soundsources.

Found sounds, field recordings, drones, noises and buzzes are meticulously combined with more traditional musical elements like jazzy trumpet, guitar harmonics and dreamy piano. All meddled with via numerous digital means, but far from random but well thought out and composed. Often the origin is quite clear, the sounds aren't distorted beyond recognition. The familiarity of some sounds provide melancholy or put you at ease, but often they are disturbed by the less comfortable footsteps in the hall, spoken words from a film or the sudden plunge into dark droney hums.

Although segmented into 'songs', the album is more continuous in nature. The mood changes but often within the pieces and this results in Hostile being a uninterupted trip of almost an hour. The title may come off slightly misleading as albeit dark and moody, you won't find any harsh brutal noises. Only a short gap between the deep rumblings of Empty precedes the dignified muted trumpet theme of Frank's which quitely marches us into slighty uncomfortable static and ghostly voices from a broken radio.