Juniperfin by SILVANIA

“Juniperfin” is the first long-player by SILVANIA since the release of “Paisaje III”, the record which announced the definitive step of the twosome towards more radical, electronic positions. In the meantime, the band’s coherent evolution has been widely appreciated in such maxi-singles as “Galax Trax” and “Suprematiz” or the single “Aero”, and above all on the fantastic remixes CD “Delay Tambor” (where they also featured new tracks mixed by themselves), with internationally renowned collaborations by the likes of Scanner, Scorn, Locust, Autechre or Seefeel. Now they come back with eleven new songs in which they have reached the borders of the stylistic zone in which techno music is usually shut (the demands of the dancefloor, positivism...) and have created a record of emotional, sometimes dark electronic music, with the feet firmly stuck on a land of formal risk but the eyes set on a pop horizon which Mario and Cocó reaffirm, in an abstract but categorical way, with that language of spiritual daydreaming and clouds of sound which distinguished them from the very start.

The record has been recorded in the band’s own studio, without any engineers nor producers who could divert their targets, and the outcome is a higher quality production which turns them into selected members of the international scene of the “intelligent techno”.

On this record there’s a constant use of industrial sounds, be it exploring a noisy, dislocated rhythm from which they wave from far the most innovative drum’n’bass (“Ialu”), or that only incursion in the future possibilities of minimal dance and digital distorsion (“Lunik”), very close to German avant garde labels like Chain Reaction or Basic Channel. Or most of the times hiding a sky of beautiful melodies under metallic surfaces (“Isonauta”, “Aldrin”, “Cielo”), which connect us with the evocative atmospheres of their first records but as well with the new, iconoclastic sound of some artists from British label Warp: Aphex Twin, Autechre, Seefeel; an aspect which is most clear in those impossible atmospheres, full with samplings of breathings and hearthrobs, and that investigation on the beauty of radial white noise and all kind of erratic sequences (“Tempo”, “Desonda”, “Fantasis 02”). After the aggressive feeling of an industrial obsession (“Juniper”)we get to, maybe, the peak of the record, a chant to melancholy and isolation (“Aicel”) in which vocal textures, abstract and atmospherical, go from almost total silence to saturation, in a path full of winks to a part of the musical heritage of Mario and Cocó, dense distorsions by some digital My Bloody Valentine join the lyricism of the 4AD sound, Suicide’s claustrophobia or Eno’s wide open spaces.

All this is developed under an almost scientific rhythm work which ends up shaping a record which, as all of Silvania’s, isn’t the soundtrack of any generation, but the personal and intimate vision of these times they share with us.