The Apogee of Domestication

Does DARVO MACHINÆ II, New York/Madrid composer Álvaro Domene's newest three-song album, sound like DARVO MACHINÆ I? Sort of. Released a month after the first installment, DARVO MACHINÆ II offers similar sonic layers to its older sibling, namely how the whoosh, buzz, and rhythmic crash of IDM form a thrillingly uneasy alliance with jagged jazz guitar runs. So, with its surface qualities pinned for inspection like a butterfly on display, it's not difficult to spot the throughline of the DARVO MACHINÆ trilogy thus far.

But, of course, no stack of superlatives can properly prepare a listener for Domene's surprises. As we've come to know over a career that has produced a stunning body of work that continues to push the possibilities of music ever forward, saying or reading anything about the art is different from listening. That is to say, aurally encountering the latest Domene composition turns the conceptual into the concrete, grounding the experimental in something real. It's the music equivalent of seeing the first modern painting that opens your eyes, the first taste of a dish that expands your palate, the fact that turns your snapshot of reality into a panorama. As culture continues to stall out, trying to amplify the now-imperceptible echo of a big bang from decades ago, Domene's music has an increasingly rare freshness. You press play; your brain lights up. It repudiates the lazily retro and enforced staleness. A new Álvaro Domene album is truly that: new. That's what you can expect going in. The rest? Well, fittingly, that's another thing entirely.

DARVO MACHINÆ II's bookends are fascinating, contrasting the insistent, thudding thump of electronic beats with squiggly guitars invading the margins like a colony of ants discovering a cache of crumbs — chaos at first until the 'tracing a pheromone trail' logic is unveiled. Still, "Convulsing in Cognitive Distortions" and "Cosmological Dissonance" wear their titles well, dedicating five minutes each to exploring contemporary consciousness as it's fried by this too-busy world that's both blunt and insidious. However, unlike an endless doomscroll, they're also a joy to listen to — rich with detail and harmonic invention — swallowing you up and elongating your attention span, which is no small feat in the age of deficits. The elevator pitch is something like "Diamorphoses" transcribed to guitar and handed over to an unstuck from time, clicked and cut into abstraction, Venetian Snares. Wild.

The centerpiece is the nearly 31-minute "The Apogee of Domestication." It's pure Domene in that it functions on multiple levels, able to occupy the background while also enveloping you with its details — part Steve Roachian hum, part Autechrean rolls of the rhythmic dice. It's dynamic, too, at times building up to squalls like growing hurricanes, and at others flying through the eyewalls to reach the eerie interior. Needless to say, it's bracing in its inventiveness, the kind of music that elicits an "Oh, this is what music can do!" from the newly adventurous. And that's just it: You can say things about Álvaro Domene's compositions, and read them, too, but the listening is the surprise, one that will evolve any listener's perception of music's potential, no matter their fluency. That's why we're here, weary travelers. DARVO MACHINÆ II is new, and when you come out the other side, you're new, too. – Ian Chainey [AKA Wolf Rambatz linktr.ee/wrambatz ]