(2022) Rocio Zavala - Invisible Miracles  


Review:
Rocio Zavala is a Mexican musician and visual artist who in recent times has been based in Chicago. Invisible Miracles, her debut recording, is sourced from recordings, some made in front of audiences and others without, over the past five years in both Hidalgo and Illinois. One might suppose that elapsed time and shifts in situation might contribute to the tape’s sonic variety, but it’s hard to draw direct lines of influence. Nothing about Zavala’s music overtly references folkloric, popular, or underground styles associated with either locale. It’s neither beat-oriented nor rhythm-averse. And her equipment defies destiny. Many of her sounds issue from self-made zithers, synthesizers, and other electronics, but working with custom gear is not an end in itself, since she’s also willing to use a guitar or E-mu modular synth. Tools are means, not ends. The eight pieces on Invisible Miracles might come from different decades, not a mere half-decade. The titular track’s quavering, analog tones would sound right at home soundtracking some German art movie from the 1970s; but if the sputtering, digital percolation of “Blue Violet,” the very next cut, stowed away on a Microstoria record from the 1990s, none would be the wiser. The grimy, fragmentary “Warp Space” might have been fileted from an early industrial tape; it’s neighbor, the expansive “Light Body,” fairly gleams by comparison. But the way each composition flows into the next feels almost meteorological, as though each change is an expression of a larger system’s dynamics.


   


Track List:
01 - Root Drone
02 - Blue Violet
03 - Warp Space
04 - Light Body
05 - Want Without One
06 - Looming Over Azra
07 - Interparalis
08 - How Much Matter


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, experimental
Country: Chicago, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits


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