Review | "Saint Malo" by Saint Malo
A debut LP of extraordinary brilliance and outstanding imagination
A quiet triumph of minor gestures, this delightful release is the debut LP by the Spanish composer Saint Malo, the artistic name of Javier Jiménez Rolo, who is a classically trained multi-instrumentalist who has collaborated with Pajaro Sunrise for several years.
In his own words, the record is “a project that explores the intersections of neoclassicism, folk, ambient and electronic textures.”
The intimate sonic palette is defined right from the opening track, featuring a lyrical arrangement of acoustic guitar, soaring strings, gentle pizzicato, and sentimental chords teetering right on the edge of emotional intensity, never tipping over, neither soaring, but only acrobatically balancing between the spectacular and the tense, like a tingle up the spine or hair standing on end, signifying an emotional state as acute as it is uncanny.
This reflective atmosphere of cautious optimism and bittersweet content is tinged with lyrical folk tropes, making for an alchemical amalgam whose sonic charm is more than the sum of its parts, yet never strays far either from wistfulness or joy – a fragile accomplishment that seems to be the key of this impressive achievement.
The relatively modest analog instrumentation keeps each track rooted in an organic honesty of humanistic frequencies, yet this simplicity belies a whimsical sophistication informing the erudite references of an album that draws from various illustrative genres, like field recordings, incidental music, soundtracks, library themes consciously employing the stirring harmonies, cadences, arpeggios, glissando, and other “pretty” motifs frequently employed by advertising jingles for luxury products, mannerisms that register as recognizable ciphers for artistic sophistication and narrative verve, here alluding to a meta consciousness regarding such soundtrack orthodoxies
My highlight is the truly extraordinary “Dolce Far Niente”, whose title means “the sweetness of doing nothing” in Italian. It's a gem of a track decorated with hand claps cheerleading an otherworldly theremin (or perhaps mellotron?) melody, the entire improbable arrangement supported by a gentle guitar strum.
In “Cais do Sodré” a rush of string crescendos ushers cinematic drama to the contemplative mood, making this a representative case for the theme of fluctuating intensities that recur within various other tracks, all of which, though relatively short in running time, are also very structured, featuring intros, main themes as well as various movements and codas.
“Sorrento” plays out like an interlude for an early '70s art film, at once melancholy and ethereal.
Each delicate track is music that asserts its presence as an invitation for daydreaming, simultaneously announcing the potential of escape and a state of things to be
Gentle, harmonious, organic - this is a beautiful album proposing an entirely new definition of acoustic ambient music, one that is simultaneously rooted in a long tradition of romantic splendor
Original text written by Panagiotis Chatzistefanou, Berlin, December 2003