- 2LP
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Rafael Toral
Traveling Light
Drag City - Cat No: DC948
- updated:2025-12-23
A new album from Rafael Toral, the Portuguese experimental musician/guitarist with 30 years of activity behind him, who also toured Japan this past summer. A year and a half after "Spectral Evolution" — one of the best records of 2024, which marked the first release in 20 years for Jim O'Rourke's label Moikai — he steps away from abstract forms with a bold new work built around jazz standards. His authorial voice stands out all the more for taking on tunes that have been performed hundreds of ways. A single dreamlike event. A single experience.
Track List
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1. Easy Living
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2. Solitude
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3. Body and Soul
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4. You Don't Know What Love Is
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5. My Funny Valentine
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6. God Bless the Child

As if carrying over from the previous album, it opens with the birdsong of feedback, then builds a sound image reconstructed like a small orchestra using sine waves, feedback, and bass guitar, centered on guitar and his own homemade electronics including a theremin. Iconic standards from the first half of the 20th century — "Easy Living," "Body and Soul," "My Funny Valentine" and others recorded by Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, and Bill Evans — are reborn as something else entirely, cloaked in a solemn quality that recalls liturgical music played on a pipe organ. Four tracks bring in guests with an orthodox jazz sound: clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, flugelhornist Yaw Tembe, and flutist Clara Saleiro, each appearing on one track. Double LP. Be sure to check out the secret bonus track on the D side in physical form. (Original Japanese text by Adachi)