There is a lot of music out there these days and some small portion of that makes its way into my inbox unbidden. Artists whose names I don’t recognize, links to streaming services I don’t use, and albums in genres I’ve never heard of. Occasionally I’ll be doing some task or other and will look into one of these emails. Honestly, most of the time it’s not my cup of tea. But sometimes I find myself unexpectedly coming back to something. Even something that might seem at first likes it’s also not my cup of tea. This is exactly what happened with Gabriel Vicéns latest album, Mural.
Mr. Vicéns has apparently been playing jazz for a number of years, but Mural is what might be called contemporary chamber. It is contemplative and dissonant, gentle and jarring; and always with a lot of space to breathe. At times it’s tense, like the soundtrack for a horror film. At other times it’s almost bucolic. Often such a shift happens within the same composition.
Mural has seven songs spanning the years 2019-2022 and starts off with the title track, commencing with a bit of solo piano, the playing spare, sometimes discordant, before clarinet and violin join. There can be almost an occasional sprightly feeling between the silences, although mostly the instruments play quietly off each other, both soft and, occasionally, somber.
“Sueños Ligados,” for violin, piano, and cello, is somewhat denser, the cello adding a lovely warmth. Yet moments of stillness remain. The piano run that starts “El Matorral” is playful and wouldn’t be out of place in a film noir, most likely in a scene with a character on the run, trying to lose some shadowy figure. The feeling is heightened as flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and vibraphone all join the chase. At almost 15 minutes, it is the longest song on the album, sometimes stopping for full seconds of silence before slowly and almost gingerly continuing.
“Una Superificie Sin Rostro” is solo piano and spare, quiet, unhurried. The title translates as “a faceless surface,” and the music is ice-like, slowly cracking and reforming but never ceasing to move. “Una Superificie Sin Rostro” ends so quietly that it is only by the entrance of violin that a new song, “Carnal,” is announced. Here the violin and piano work almost against each other, never out of sync, but perhaps never in sync, either. The impression is once again cinematic, again somewhat Hitchcockian.
“Ficción” brings in the additional instrumentation of the Nu Quintet; flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. But the mood remains subdued and contemplative, the music repeatedly rising and falling back to silence. The cello and piano of “La Estera” restate some of the discordances of earlier parts of the record, but with a sense of finality, like walking away.
Sometimes it’s difficult to say why we find a particular song or piece of music compelling, perhaps even more so when the music itself has no words. In such cases, it can be easier to describe something that is like the thing rather than thing itself, and Vicéns himself does this in a way that immediately resonates. He says, “I’m fascinated by how Roman and Egyptian frescoes have decayed slowly for centuries and how the cracks and layers of colors have become part of the current stage of the work, creating a complex and atmospheric character. Over time, we get our cracks and layers of colors…we get the energy and inspiration to write music that communicates something abstractly.”
I think that is indeed what makes Mural such an evocative listen, the often uneven layers of instrumentation, the cracks of silence in the compositions, and the sometimes slow regaining of momentum after everything has fallen away. The distance between comforting and unsettling is often traveled in a single moment, a single note. And, while I may not know much about modern chamber music, I know a little something about life, and you’ll find plenty of that elusive quantity reflected in Mural.
