Ricardo Donoso – From Sterling To Silver
The last week of my 27th year has been pretty grown-up. Besides, 28 is too old to not have a laundry cycle. I finally booked an eye-test, started reading Proust finally, fixed-up a bike, did an acceptable amount of exercise, filled in some forms and avoided eating too much fried chicken or drinking too much beer. Saturn’s return is what it apparently is in astrological terms. Meteorologically, the lollygagging season is most certainly over. Either way, my room is tidy and I’m almost acting like an adult. It’s a nice feeling.
In the middle of this appreciation for orderliness, health and work ethic I heard an incredibly beautiful piece of music that fit my almost-certainly temporary mood perfectly. It’s by a guy from Brazil, who now lives in Boston called Ricardo Donoso and it’s called From Sterling To Silver, and you can listen to it below.
Ricardo lives in Boston, Massatcheuts, and he’s released music for the last few years on the American tape underground, most significanty with last year’s ‘Progress, Chance’, also out on Digitalis. Acid house and minimal techno soak the album, and the song, but it’s the restraint with which these are employed that makes it so affecting. The drums are stripped out, and melodies are tapped with a lovely sense of purpose and keen awareness of affect.
He may easily be filed next to people like Pantha Du Prince and The Field, as in he’s a dude doing sound-design leaning techno that sounds like a pretty Mitteleuropean train journey with someone clever in a polo neck, yet his palatte is far more restrained and human than either of these two musicians. Though minimal and considered, it’s never cold. In fact, the thing that makes it sound so damned mature is that From Sterling To Silver is a pretty and personal composition, imperfect in its way. The drums are programmed by a human hand, the sense of time tapped out and never over awing, the sense of build and climax understated and dignified. A song of intense beauty and knowledge, the perfect one for this week, and one for the next quarter of life.
