Buenos Aires composer Ignacio Sandoval, aka YOTO, returns to London's Kit Records with a new album of dismantled Argentinian folk music. Taking root at the border between Latin American folk tradition and the kiln of Buenos Aires' distinctly bustling experimental arts scene, Ciprés is a loose-limbed collection of elegiac storytelling.
Guitar remains at the heart of YOTO's practice; each piece on Ciprés began life as a miniature improvisation, recorded in real time then gently adorned with splintering melodies of marimba and xylophone, and funereal marching percussion. The results form a series of private moments; internal sculptures and scenes that speak to the intimacy and solitude of domestic life.
Like fellow Argentinian boundary-pushers Aylu and Vic Bang, YOTO's previous work bubbled with a fermented maximalism (see "Levure"). In contrast, Ciprés alludes to weathered forms - dialogues that fork, disintegrate and improbably rekindle, like aerial roots feeling their way through an ancient city wall. When Sandoval's voice does appear - on "Viento De Otoño" - it casts a dappled, swaying shadow..
Recommended if you like Josephine Foster, The Residents, Lucrecia Dalt, Animal Collective, Tom Waits, J.H. Guraj.