Joaquin Muro | "Contracara"

After releasing his first album as a leader, Joaquin Muro quickly returns with his second work: Contracara. It is presented as a B-side of his first album, Oxímoron. Recorded in the same session as the latter, the album has its roots in the free improvisation meetings Joaquin had with his friend and colleague Camila Nebbia (with a musical bond that goes back many years, having shared important projects such as the Juan Izkierdo Grupo and Richard Nant's La Big Nant) during the 2020 lockdown in Buenos Aires. Invited to record on one track of the first work, the original idea was to record two free improvisations that would serve as separators of the album's tracks. Having plenty of time in the studio, these sonic experimentations resulted in 7 tracks (3 as a duo and 4 with the full band) that ended up spontaneously becoming the material for a second album. 

The music of Contracara is presented as the complementary opposite of the music of Oxímoron, a very arranged album, with a lot of written passages and a high presence of counterpoint and irregular metrics as main compositional resources. In this case, the common thread of the album is free and spontaneous improvisation, a field in which Joaquin feels very comfortable and which is also a faithful reflection of his profile as an artist.

The soundscapes of Contracara, although very abstract, reflect images and moods representative of the uncertainty that was experienced both emotionally and artistically during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is an album of a dark and melancholic character, with some flashes of luminosity, and all the strength of spontaneous creation.

Finally, the title of this album has its origin in the concept of complementary opposition, being the music conceptually contrary to that of the first work but equally representative of the artist, it is presented as the other side of the same coin.       

Although the music of each track has its own character, the key element that defines this album is the concept of free improvisation and spontaneous creation.

The first track, Brugmansia Arborea (scientific name of the flower popularly known as floripondio) is a duet between Camila and Joaquin in which they explore from the timbre, with a wide use of extended techniques and with a quite psychedelic aesthetic, which could be framed within noise.

Then follows Sonar (la oscuridad del lecho marino), a track of dark character, whose title has its origin in the first notes of the piano, that refer to the sonority that emits a sonar device and that then develops slowly to show, from the abstraction, diverse imaginary landscapes of the marine bottom, lost objects of shipwrecks, shoals of fish and subaquatic mountain ranges.  Nadie nos baila lo quitado is perhaps the most accessible track on the album, a frenetic uptempo.

Villa Pueyrredon is the second duet between Joaquin and Camila, which in opposition to the first one, here the exploration happens from the melody, to reflect landscapes of the neighborhood of which they were neighbors and even in which they developed meetings of improvisation to duet in the street.

Astenia is an introspective track, which refers to a journey through the subconscious and its depths, with an exploration also from the timbre, but now at a group level.\

Passive Aggressive has a very obvious title and perhaps the most graphic and representative of all the tracks. The idea of this improvisation was that while Joaquin and Camila improvised as a duet, the rhythm section would intervene in an aggressive way, entering and then leaving again.

Bruxismo is the last duet and theme of the album, a short and intense track, whose title comes from the first notes, which refer to the sound of teeth clashing and scraping.