{"id":6190,"date":"2025-10-24T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/rafael-toral-is-murdering-the-classics\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T14:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T14:30:00","slug":"rafael-toral-is-murdering-the-classics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/rafael-toral-is-murdering-the-classics\/","title":{"rendered":"Rafael Toral Is Murdering the Classics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/10\/20250109_006_cred_VeraMarmelo.jpg\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" alt=\"Rafael Toral. (Credit: Vera Marmelo)\"><figcaption>Rafael Toral. (Credit: Vera Marmelo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Rafael Toral\u2019s most recent album, 2024\u2019s <em>Spectral Evolution<\/em>, consisted of a single 42-minute track, divided into loose, flowing movements, but based on the chord changes of the Gershwin chestnut \u201cI Got Rhythm.\u201d On his follow-up, <em>Traveling Light <\/em>(October 24), the Portuguese guitarist works smaller, refashioning six jazz standards using his \u201cspace instruments\u201d\u2014 electronic contraptions of his own invention that modulate feedback, distort signals, and utilize other instruments like the theremin to create eerie tones, transforming them into something decidedly nontraditional.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As on <em>Spectral Evolution<\/em>, Toral radically decreases tempos, letting chords elongate into languorous drones that sound more like electric organ than guitar. It\u2019s a simple yet effective trick that\u2019s been used by countless bands\u2014if you slow things down enough, even the simplest melody and most basic rhythm turn strange, complex, and compelling. Yet Toral has got more on his mind than a good gimmick; the way he elaborates and expands upon the hypnotic structures of these decelerated oldies never fails to surprise or intrigue.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/10\/mumford-and-sons-hozier-single\/\">Mumford &amp; Sons \u2018Band\u2019 Together With Hozier<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/10\/5-albums-i-cant-live-without-slim-jim-phantom-of-the-stray-cats\/\">5 Albums I Can\u2019t Live Without: Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/10\/deep-cut-friday-state-trooper-by-bruce-springsteen\/\">Deep Cut Friday: \u2018State Trooper\u2019 by Bruce Springsteen<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/10\/a2335124154_10-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-646344\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/10\/a2335124154_10-1.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/10\/a2335124154_10-1-340x340.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/10\/a2335124154_10-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/10\/a2335124154_10-1-498x498.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><\/figure>\n<p>Toral picked his tunes shrewdly, with an ear for the esoteric but never descending into pure obscurity. Three are associated with Billie Holiday: \u201cEasy Living,\u201d \u201cBody and Soul\u201d and \u201cGod Bless the Child\u201d (the latter co-written by her), two with Miles Davis: \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know What Love Is\u201d and \u201cMy Funny Valentine.\u201d One, \u201c(In My) Solitude,\u201d is a Duke Ellington number. Except for \u201cValentine\u201d and \u201cChild,\u201d most are probably not well-known outside of the jazz community, but all have been performed by legendary artists and left a mark in the popular subconscious. Written in the 1930s and \u201940s, these songs share a sort of bone-deep Depression-era desolation, a mix of sultry ache, bluesy insouciance, and modernist lassitude, the sort of wee-hour existentialism that disappeared after the boom times began and America went suburban.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a vibe that\u2019s usually cloaked in nostalgia, but in Toral\u2019s hands, it grows feral. Stretched out like molasses, the streetwise dream of \u201cEasy Living\u201d becomes surreal and disorienting, especially with the high-pitched, froglike chirp that kicks it off and which recurs throughout. Ellington\u2019s \u201cSolitude,\u201d a gently dissonant reverie, retains a wistful sophistication even as its elegant harmonic sensibility dissolves into a welter of drones, accordionlike pulses, and synthetic, birdlike calls. With <em>Traveling Light<\/em>, Toral isn\u2019t so much evoking or exploring the past as he is reimagining it, turning it into something not exactly new, but different; not exactly alien, but disarmingly unfamiliar.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Besides stretching these songs, Toral also stretches himself. He summons some remarkable tones from his instruments, from the glassy, echo-laden strum of \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know What Love Is\u201d to the blistered warps that open \u201cGod Bless the Child.\u201d He also finds more room to play guitar that sounds like guitar, giving \u201cMy Funny Valentine\u201d a tactile weight that feels weirdly organic among the shimmering ribbons of drone and electronic warbles. Most impressively, he occasionally lets in additional musicians, with a line from a clarinet, tenor sax, flugelhorn, or flute suddenly manifesting among Toral\u2019s manufactured labyrinths. It\u2019s a testament to the uncanny magic of <em>Traveling Light<\/em> that, for a few seconds, these unadorned analog instruments from jazz\u2019s heyday sound just as unreal as the processed guitar and altered electronics, while the muted microchip roar of Toral\u2019s technology feels like the oldest love song, whispered in the bittersweet dark, full of indomitable heartbreak and irrepressible human longing.<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rafael Toral. (Credit: Vera Marmelo) Rafael Toral\u2019s most recent album, 2024\u2019s Spectral Evolution, consisted of a single 42-minute track, divided into loose, flowing movements, but based on the chord changes&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4224,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pushly","category-rafael-toral","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}