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Ferran Fages "Cançons per a un lent retard "
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| About Cançons per a un lent retard | |
Ferran Fages: Acoustic guitar; Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga: Detuning on track 6.
Recorded during 2007.
Etude Records is proud to release "Cançons per a un lent retard" by Catalan composer Ferran Fages. 71 minutes of acoustic guitar divided into 9 tracks full of solitude and hopeness. -E.R. "The impulse to compose this music has been to accompany the slow decay of my father´s life... one way of expressing the anguish and emptiness of seeing and living a life slip away. His death came one month after the recording." -Ferran Fages "Cançons per a un lent retard, Ferran´s second guitar album stands a-parallel to the first (a cavall entre dos cavalls). 9 songs or cançons that reveal (give us access to) the becoming of a song, opposed to today's platitude of objective and/or subjective song-writing... Ferran´s objective. It is not a posthumous homage. |
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| Reviews Cançons per a un lent retard | |
Though Fages takes pains to assert that the present album is not a posthumous homage to his father, who died a month after the recording was concluded, and also dedicated it to his father’s caretaker, the music was clearly intended as a reaction to and an observation of what he refers to as “the slow decay of my father’s life”. I take it that it’s safe to translate the title as, “songs for a slow demise”.
I suppose it’s a natural tendency in such situations to create work which might be more accommodating to the person involved, in the case of more abstract-oriented artists, to turn toward more traditional and emotionally evocative formats. Jason Lescalleet, whose magnificent release from last year one can hardly help but recall, included his daughter singing “Molly Malone” and structured his noise-filled tape manipulations into a near programmatic summation of his loss and acceptance. While I’m certainly not familiar with everything Fages has committed to disc (I don’t know his earlier solo recording “a cavall entre dos cavalls”), the pieces on “cançons per a un lent retard” are far more overtly emotional in a traditional sense than anything I’ve previously heard from him, though they’re resolutely clear-eyed and unflinching. It’s some pretty great music.Though one could easily note the almost mandatory sonic indebtedness to Bailey, Fages (on acoustic guitar throughout) is generally more consonant in approach but no less incisive. Sometimes, as near the beginning of the lengthy “suspense horizontal”, there are clear precedents in “opposite”-era Sugimoto. If anything, however, I found myself thinking of Loren Connors, though minus the blues saturation, substituting instead a Spanish melancholy with tinges of flamenco (occasionally quite clear as in the central portion of :tangent al dit” or much of “gir lent”). On “paraula clau”, Fages, otherwise heard solo, performs an intriguing duet with Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga who is responsible for detuning the guitar on the run, as it were, resulting in a haunting, bleak series of wavering moans, buzzes and taps. Fages tends to stay in the mid to lower range of the guitar, playing harshly plucked single notes against vast, abyssal chords that swallow them whole.The technical and influential aspects are really secondary, though. The music here is extraordinary, often brutally so. Fages opens himself to the experience of a loved one’s deterioration, neither glancing away in “good taste” or reluctance to face reality nor ignoring the enormous emotional price it’s exacting on him. No pathos, just hard-edged sorrow.When he closes the disc with “retall llorg”, using perhaps something like an e-bow on the strings to generate layers of morose drones before merging into a slow cascade of dolorous notes, there’s a sense of true exhaustion. It’s not pretty or hopeful, just very true.-Brian Olewnick (Bagatellen)
Sur son deuxième album personnel, Ferran Fages illustre, au son d'une guitare folk, les étapes successives de la disparition de son père. Evidemment chargé.
Sans cela: poignant quand même. Cordes étouffées, distendues ou vibrantes, harmoniques et aigus sourdant des nappes graves, accords en suspension ou, au contraire, sur lequel le guitariste s'acharne, font la substance de Cançons per a un lent retard. Pour catalyser les émotions implacables, entre les résonances profondes et l'insistance d'aller-retours rapides au médiator, Fages va et vient, consignant une épreuve enfantant une musique plusieurs fois convaincante pour rien d'autre qu'elle-même: le temps d'une gnossienne disloquée (L'ombre del dit) ou, plus encore, d'une réflexion sur les effets de la répétition, formule revue et subtilement corrigée sur Suspens Horizontal.De quoi relativiser l'appréhension que l'on peut ressentir au moment d'investir une expérience qui devrait nous rester étrangère.-Le Son du Grisli
The new trend in electronic music seems to be going acoustic and sometimes even start writing 'real songs'. Ferran Fages, a Catalan musician whose resume mentions, besides guitar, no-input mixer and turntables in Cremaster also took this step. On A cavall entre dos cavalls and this album it's just guitar.Although radical, the approach isn't completely different. The music on Cançons per a un lent retard is very much everything that happens besides the notes. When strumming the strings a microscope is put on the 'unwanted sounds', as it were. Just to reveal all the overtones, scrapes, harmonics, resonations and even a mild drone that happen in this process and are very much wanted here. Although the endresult shows some similarity with the work of Derek Bailey and Eugene Chadbourne I feel Fages' approach in the end is closer to Alva Noto and Ryoji Ikeda, albeit less rhythmic.Fages' impulse to compose this music was the slow decay of his father's life. Not a posthumous tribute, as the album was finished for a month when his father passed away. The music follows this by taking its time, slowly and thoughtful. Various techniques are used to get all kinds of sounds from the guitar, but still within the conventional means of pick and sometimes a bottleneck, no extended Chadbourne techniques. Some parts do remind of John Zorn's tribute to "Pops", the infamous The Book Of Heads. Cançons... is easier to digest than that one though. With its heavy theme of his father's decline it's by no means 'easy', it's heavy with emotion.The devil is in the detail as the saying goes, this album needs to be played on a decent soundsystem at loud enough a volume to reveal all the intricacies that are invoked from the metal- and woodwork of the acoustic guitar. The only critique would be the length, it's quite heavy to sit through the entire 70 minute course of it. At the same time it feels rather disrespectful to turn it off halfway through. Had Ferran cut a little fat here and there it would've been a quite stunning album.-Martijn Busink (Musique Machine)
Ferran Fages is a musician from Barcelona, Spain who performs using turntables, electronics, and guitar. For “Cançons Per A Un Lent Retard,” he performs acoustic guitar pieces he created during the time leading up to his father’s death. Fages states in the liner notes, “The impulse to compose this music has been to accompany the slow decay of my father’s life. . . one way of expressing the anguish and emptiness of seeing and living a life slip away. It is not a posthumous homage.” Consequently, the nine tracks on the album are harsh and unsettling, yet extremely skillful in their portrayal of the range of strong emotions surrounding the decline and death of a loved one.Fages deals in raw emotion throughout the album, conjuring feelings of sadness, emptiness, and anger. The sadder pieces have a dark, minimal quality with a huge emphasis on the spaces and silence in the music. Notes and chords are played and left to decay into complete silence. The beginning of the track “Suspens horitzontal” manipulates these spaces to great effect, taking long pauses between parts to allow the guitar to silence itself. Despite its simplicity, the piece overflows with dark emotion, making the sadness Fages must have felt palpable in the music.In contrast to the quieter moments, there are pieces that pack a sharp bite. On these tracks, it sounds as if Fages is literally attacking his guitar with a series of dissonant chords and cutting notes. This is especially apparent in the heavy-sounding piece “Gir lent,” which rolls out in a series of loud, fractured chords. The sense of sadness remains, but is accompanied by a strong sense of anger. In these loud moments, it is easy to imagine the helpless anger surrounding death and the urge to fight the inevitable, but being wholly unable.“Cançons Per A Un Lent Retard” is an extremely difficult album to digest, yet rewards perseverance. Close listening reveals the raw emotion echoed by each and every note. Probably, it is best heard in pieces to fully grip what is happening in each part without feeling drained or overwhelmed. Still, it is worth the time and effort to explore the deep recesses of this deceptively simple music. 8/10 -- Matt Blackall (Foxy Digitalis)
Everybody demands honesty in music, but noone wants an artist to really share himself completely with his audience. It is a sad (or, if you like, perfectly natural) fact that what a listener perceives as truthfulness and “emotion” is really just the recognition of a shared element in the voice of a performer and his own. So how can one appreciate a work like “Cancons per a un lent retard”, which takes its seat right next to you, just like the virtual parents in a Freud’ean marriage bed? The answer is you can’t – and that’s what makes it stick out from anything we’ve heard this year.“The impulse to compose this music has been to accompany the slow decay of my father’s life”, Ferran Fages writes. It is the first important sentence attached to his second solo album. What is remarkable about it is the use of “accompany” instead of terms like “lament” or “cope with”. “Cancons per a un lent retard” finds Fages unable to yet “process” his feelings and maybe it even documents a time when he was incapable of any at all. It is, essentially, music to document the passing of time or even to replace it.Unfiltered, the seconds tick away in tracks of between barely three and monumental seventeen minutes, while the album approaches its peak in the two epic states at its core. Of course, the word “accompany” also implies that these pieces were maybe the only friend in a phase of solitude. Their spartanely sparse instrumentation of only a single acoustic guitar and no additional overdubs or effect processing, let some faint and bodyless drones hidden in the chinks of the tapestry somewhere, certainly suggests so.The second important statement is even shorter than the first: “It is not a posthumous homage”. Effectively, this means that “Cancons” is not about Fages’ father – but about the tragedy of loosing him and the helplessness which goes with that. For minutes, the guitarist slaps a single string to the point of break, churns out clustered chords, hammers raw riffs from his fingers in compositions which are going nowhere or at least not towards a tangible resolution. On the chilling “Paraula Clau”, space is filled with nothing but the sound of tunings and detunings – rarely have they sounded so intense.As a listener, of course, one asks for a reason to undergo this torture. One could treat “Cancons per a un lent retard” as a cathartic exercise, as a ritual of cleansing, but that would mean diverting it from its real use. If you’re true to this work, then you’ll accept its inacceptance.This music is the most absolute art there is, it is profoundly egoistical, existing just because it needed to be written, with no audience in mind and no practical use intended. That, however, is exactly what sharing means – allowing the other in and making him undergo what one experienced without looking for a message: If there’s nothing to understand, there’s nothing to explain.-Tobias Fisher (Tokafi)
Spanish guitarist Ferran Fages makes it clear that "Cancons Per a un Lent Retard" [roughly translating to "Songs for a Slow Death"] was driven by his father's slow decay. If any word could describe his pieces, it would not necessarily be sad [though they fit that category], but rather persistent and angry. In every tuning of his acoustic guitar, one hears unmistakable anger and fury. Every few seconds, Fages pauses as if to recall something about his dad. It's as if he tries to access his mind's memory banks and retrieve bits and pieces of his father's life. Pensive, but absolutely barren, with a drive that's greater than strength of a burning sun, Fages makes an absolutely convincing statement full of naked humanity.-Tom Sekowski (Gaz-Eta)
Impro più o meno radicale e sentimenti o sentimentalismo solitamente non vanno molto d'accordo, anzi. Spesso una delle accuse mosse al genere è proprio quella di un'eccessiva attitudine intellettualoide: molto cervello, almeno nelle intenzioni, e poco cuore. Ma si sa, se esistono delle regole codificate, allora esiste anche qualcuno a cui piace infrangerle. L'anno scorso Jason Lescalleet, noto sperimentatore devoto al culto della tape music e formidabile collaboratore in diverse occasioni con il duo nmperign, proponeva The Pilgrim, prodotto feticcio, bellissimo vinile picture disc + cd, ma anche e soprattutto documento musicale dedicato alla memoria del padre appena scomparso. Non una semplice dedica, di quelle il mondo è pieno, dato che il dolore della perdita, offerto in pasto al pubblico in maniera quasi imbarazzante costituiva parte integrante dell'opera. Esemplare il secondo lato del vinile, dove la voce affaticata di Lescalleet senior, catturata durante la sua permanenza ospedaliera, chiede alla nipote di cantargli una canzone. Veramente straziante. Parto da questo disco, perché le motivazioni che stanno dietro a questa raccolta solista di Ferran Fages inevitabilmente rimandano ad esso. In questo caso non si tratta di un omaggio post mortem, ma il musicista spagnolo ci tiene a precisare che la musica è stata concepita durante durante il lento spegnersi della vita del padre e da questo triste evento trae la sua ispirazione. Inevitabilmente, legare un prodotto artistico in maniera così volutamente esplicita a dei fatti strettamente personali può suscitare qualche perplessità. Triste calcolo commerciale? Difficile dirlo, data la microscopica consistenza del mercato a cui questi dischi si rivolgono, e forse anche meschino sospettarlo.
Ferran Fages gode di una qualche notorietà nell'ambiente in quanto artefice di sonorità abbastanza abrasive, generate principalmente dall'utilizzo poco ortodosso di giradischi ed electronics, in compagnia di nomi quali Alfredo Monteiro (nel duo Cremaster) e Ruth Barberian (nel duo Error Focus) oltre ad essere protagonista di innumerevoli collaborazioni con, tra gli altri, Taku Unami, Francisco Lopez e Masafumi Ezaki. Qui però, e a quanto pare (dato che personalmente non l'ho sentito) anche nel precedente "A Cavall Entre Dos Cavallos", il nostro si concentra esclusivamente sulla chitarra, con risultati, a mio modesto parere, assolutamente superbi. Pensate al procedere sconnesso ed irregolare del grande e rimpianto Derek Bailey, agli evanescenti origami del Taku Sugimoto pre-silenzio, aggiungeteci una (inevitabile, date le premesse del disco) coltre scura e un pò della malinconia rosso fuoco di un città come Barcellona e avrete una qualche idea di cosa aspettarvi da queste cançons. L'iniziale Suspens Vertical procede in maniera molto parsimoniosa, poche note, ognuna con un peso specifico enorme, le corde pizzicate con dolorosa fisicità, resa benissimo dalla pazzesca qualità audio del cd, tutta un farsi di scale sbilenche e improvvise chiusure. Accordi che risuonano di metallo al limite della rottura e incredibili discese nel buio a base di blues latino (se esiste una cosa del genere) rallentato ed annebbiato, e circolari sviluppi ritmici nella magnifica coppia di Tangent Al Dit e L'Ombra Del Dit. Spettrale, minimale, gutturale, a tratti lamentosamente e leggermente droning la lunga Paraula Clau, disturbata dagli interventi di scordatura in real time di Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga, a rappresentare il momento più sperimentale ed "ostico" del cd. In definitiva, per il sottoscritto, uno dei dischi più belli di questo 2007 agli sgoccioli, perfetta sintesi di tecnica, sperimentazione e....cuore. Se proprio devo muovergli una critica, riguarda l'eccessiva durata, intorno ai 70 minuti, e qualche lungaggine di troppo. -Alfio Castorina (Kathodik) Despite having composed this music to “accompany the slow decay” of his late father, Ferran Fages also states that “it is not a posthumous homage”. Indeed it doesn’t sound like that: no plangent melodies, no gloomy atmospheres. Only an acoustic guitar and its strings, which Ferran touches with surprising conviction and decision, mostly concentrating on the relations between the different harmonics’ resonances and contrasts with a slight experimental aura, at times sparkled by the use of real-time detunings. He shows intelligence, restraint and sensitiveness at one and the same time. Halfway through the barely moving lines of a “new silence” outing and Loren Connors’ post-modern blues, “Cançons” is a long meditation on death - yes - but also a hymn to the necessary simplicity of an expressive means applied to a far-sighted aesthetic, equal to the one characterizing the Catalan’s work with entities such as Cremaster, Will Guthrie and Norbert Möslang. It is not a short record at over 70 minutes, yet there’s not a single instance in which it overstays its welcome. These “songs” are skeletally defined but complete, made even better by well-placed choices which, in a way, dehumanize their structure while letting us peep at a course of action to which the author himself seems to participate with a degree of detachment. It’s the sonic reproduction of that feeling of just apparent coldness acting as a protective barrier against the grieve of such a fundamental loss, and Fages makes perfectly clear that he’s learnt from this experience rather than having been overwhelmed by it. The final result is a definite step forward from his previous solo CD “A cavall entre dos cavalls”, an important artistic statement, an overall satisfactory release.-Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)
Me resulta un poco dificil hablar de este disco.Me produce respeto y al oírlo siento cierto desasosiego. Realizado durante la enfermedad y muerte de su padre, Ángel Fages, no es un disco dedicado a él, sino a Anna, la persona que lo cuido durante su enfermedad. No es pues un disco de duelo, pero sí de vacio y soledad. Las notas de la guitarra acústica suenan ásperas y aisladas mientras se apagan lentamente. El título del disco no podía ser otro: cançons per a un lent retard. Hay profundos y largos silencios después de una dramática vibración de un armónico que se apaga. No hay segunda oportunidad. La realidad esuna. No es miedo lo que siento, pero sí algo cercano a la angustia. En cambio en algunos temas los acordes se suceden casi uno encima de otro. Lo siento como la huida, como si quisiera ponerse a correr hacia ninguna parte pero lejos. No es un disco para tenerlo en contra, has de tener el cuerpo pasivo porquela emoción se moverá por si sola. Como un cuerpo en decadencia en ql que su corporeidad se nos muestra más clara, hay mucha materia en la manera de tocar; los dedos que intuyes, la uña que rasga, la madera que se golpea accidentalmente... el cuerpo nunca es pesado. Es triste. Suena a llanto y a quejido.
Es un disco que demuestra la enorme emoción que se puede expresar a través de la música. Porque las palabras no sirven siempre. ¿Ya lo sabiamos no? Por si se nos olvida, Ferran nos lo recuerda. -Cristina Tascón (Nativa) Ferrán Fages con la sola ayuda de una guitarra acústica,como demuestra en este disco, es capaz de conmover pero no de conmover en el sentido lacrimógeno de la palabra, sino de remover por dentro.Escuchar esta obra da la oportunidad de enfrenterse a uno mismo, de enfrentarse a la soledad existencial de saberse solo, a la profunda realidad de la incomunicación no buscada, a la imposibilidad que da la dificultad de esa comunicación en determinados momentos. El impulso creativo de esta obra ha sido contemplar, con angustia e impotencia por lo que parece desprenderse de la escucha y de las notas interiores, el paulatino deterioro hasta la muerte de su padre. Ese rango de emociones que desprende el disco y la forma en que las plasma hace que la escucha no sea fácil pero el esfuerzo merece la pena.Formalmente deudor de de Derek Bailey, en algunos momentos juega con los espacios, con el tempo de cada nota, ralentizándolo o produciendo cascadas y clusters, informes y bellos en casa caso. Transmitiendo con quietud o rapidez, con intrincados solos o con minimales frases, un racimo de emociones como vacío, tristeza, angustia y rabia. -Ángel Mari García Martiartu (Tomajazz)
Este no es un homenaje póstumo a un ser querido fallecido un mes después de la grabación. Quizá sí sea un sincero y doloroso reencuentro con uno mismo. Ferran une pedazos de memoria en su guitarra a través de un soliloquio acústico que es por necesidad emotivo y desgarrador. El acercamiento sólo puede ser oblicuo. Las cuerdas parecen reverberar como lo hace un recuerdo en la mente, y no hay nada extraño en que las disonancias y los arpegios repetitivos se conviertan en huellas aéreas. No se aplican técnicas suplementarias de sonido, sino que todo se arranca a la soledad. Esa naturaleza que sale y entra del silencio en leves modulaciones nos recuerda más a piezas para piano solo como Palais de Mari, de Morton Feldman, que a guitarra. La calma parece asomar entre las insistencias residuales del sonido. Abortada toda continuidad melódica, son los acordes liberados en los arpegios los que producen ese sonido expansivo y esquivo a la vez. El mensaje se torna así en una especie de plegaria que provoca tensiones por saturación o de aislamiento por descompresión en la nota aislada. El espectro armónico, como elemento revelador de esta música, representa así a la memoria. -Jesús Gonzalo (revistamu.com)
Ferran Fagès apprécie particulièrement la résonance de ses cordes en acier. Lorsqu'il extrait un son de sa guitare acoustique, il le laisse longuement s'épanouir, le sertit de silence jusqu'à ce qu'on l'ait oublié puis, seulement, en ose un second qui s'inscrit également dans sa propre durée, se love au creux d'un vide sous-jacent et disparaît le plus naturellement du monde. Parfois, dans sa phonétique propre, il tolère une diphtongue, deux notes qui s'accouplent en un semblant d'accord et engendrent des harmoniques pures comme l'eau claire. Dans cet éloge de la lenteur, chaque sonorité n'existe que pour elle-même et ne fait partie que d'un tout supposé, une construction empirique dont nous ne percevrons la cohérence que lorsque tout aura été dit, entre fêlures soudaines et longues plages sans reliefs perceptibles. De temps à autre, un fil d'acier glisse hors de son trajet, frise le bord du manche et acquiert une étrange profondeur, chargée de sens et de danger. Ou bien c'est un bottleneck dont la froideur entre en contact avec le métal vibrant et impose une conception aléatoire de la justesse. Sur la plage 6, encore, un ami vient détendre les cordes de l'instrument et le grincement des mécaniques nous évoque une percussion inconnue et que l'on croyait d'abord frappée sur le bois de la table. Mais, en dépit de ces légers accidents le paysage créé par l'Espagnol ressemblerait plutôt à un No man's land dépourvu de la moindre aspérité. Pourtant, on ne s'ennuie jamais à l'écoute de cet album où le néant tient lieu d'enjeu à part entière. Le désir de cette musique est né d'un long retard, d'un rendez-vous avec la mort sans cesse repoussé alors que Ferran Fagès assistait, impuissant, à la longue dégénérescence de son père, décédé un mois après la séance. Mais ce n'est pas non plus à une macabre fascination que l'on cède. En fait, on est d'abord séduit par ce choix esthétique totalement assumé, par l'étonnante sensation de vie qui perdure malgré les lenteurs et longueurs inhérentes à tout projet de ce style et, surtout, par la construction évidente d'un évènement en pleine maturation qui s'invente à mesure qu'il se produit. Il y a même un certain suspens dans la perspective de cet assemblage inexorable dont on ne sait encore rien, comme si l'on craignait que ça ne dérape et que l'édifice ne parvienne jamais à l'accomplissement escompté. La plage 4 est d'ailleurs assez symptomatique, à ce propos, puisque, à la différence de l'ensemble, elle accumule les signes au point de paraître un condensé de l'œuvre générale. Notes simples, doubles, triples, accords entiers, rythme d'abord fortuit puis se précisant, elle procède par strates superposées avant de dérouler jusqu'au silence le fil de sa progression générale. Ainsi, les 70 courtes minutes de cet album translucide nous donnent-elles à entendre, dans la dilatation de l'instant, une sorte de composition imminente dont la structure funambule demeure longtemps suspendue au-dessus du vide, entre désir et achèvement, forme effective et rêve de cette forme. Comme lorsque l'on ne sait plus si l'être aimé est encore là ou bien s'il est déjà absent. - Joël Pagier (Improjazz)"Cançons Per a un Lent Retard" sorti en 2007 a sans doute déjà été recouvert et oublié dans la production pléthorique des musiques improvisés. Disque passé inaperçu, Ferran FAGES n'étant pas une de ces stars de l'improvisation que s'arrachent les festivals du genre, comme tout autre festival dit mainstream s'arrachent les têtes d'affiches du moment. Disque de guitariste aussi, l'improvisation ayant donné des disques qui continuent à faire de l'ombre à des guitaristes plus jeunes : ceux de Bailey, de Rowe, de Frith … putain de monuments dressés comme des autels. FAGES ne m'a pas toujours convaincu, musicien souvent trop appliqué, intellectuel, parfois scholastique, il y a une forme de purisme chez lui dans une pratique qui relève pourtant d'une impureté fondamentale. Dans ce disque il y a une forme de dépouillement qui ne relève pas du jansénisme de la new improvisation, mais du simple désir de se retrouver avec un instrument et d'en jouer dans sa limitation : cordes et bois, enfin : une acceptation de l'émotion, grande oubliée de l'histoire récente. Fabrice Eglin m'avait copié une vieille cassette de John Lee Hooker, on y entendait Derek Bailey ! Hooker y jouait pourtant des mélodies tonales. Bailey est peut-être un mauvais exemple. "L'ombra del dit" est presque un flamenco, air entendu dans les rues de Barcelone, FAGES donne à entendre le plaisir de jouer et dans cette idée du jeu il y a le partage, la communauté. "Suspens Horizontal" est en résonance avec l'album de SKROBEK, les silences bouffant les notes, rongeant la construction du jeu. Il passe d'un titre à l'autre avec toujours ce souci du son, de le placer au centre de son jeu, de donner à entendre la guitare, le son d'une guitare. Quand l'improvisation ne sera plus une figure d'école et que ses élèves feront l'école buissonnière, alors nous aurons de beaux disques comme celui-ci.Michel HENRITZI (Revue et corrigé) La discográfica independiente Etude Records alumbró el año pasado dos de los mejores discos grabados en España: Are Spirits What I Hear?, del saxofonista Agustí Martínez y Cançons Per A Un Lent Retard, de Ferran Fages. Esto viene a corroborar que hay otra escena en Cataluña que, aunque puede ser eclipsada por músicas mas banales (e innegablemente mas populares), esta completamente activa, y produciendo excelentes propuestas. Cançons Per A Un Lent Retard es, además, uno de los mejores discos de música creativa grabados en solitario con guitarra acústica que yo haya escuchado en mucho tiempo. Una grabación que, desde una melancolía árida, demanda atención a un oyente que enseguida queda atrapado por el microuniverso que desarrolla Fages. Mediante armónicos imposibles, acordes subyugantes, un inquietante uso del feedback y el slide, e incluso golpeando el cuerpo del instrumento, el guitarrista ejerce una presión amigable sobre su aliado en la creación de esta música: el silencio. Un silencio tan elocuente e importante como el propio Fages, y que termina de definir la brutalidad estática de la separación, la nostalgia febril, pero callada, que queda tras la despedida. A lo largo de las nueve composiciones que lo conforman,Cançons Per A Un Lent Retard se mantiene fascinante, profundo, emocional y tremendamente intenso. Es conveniente acercarse a él con cautela puesto que no puede (ni debe) ser una escucha casual, pero sería imperdonable no acercarse a él en absoluto.-Yahvé M. de la Cavada (http://undiamasundiscomas.blogspot.com)
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