Fitting for the analogy, Ignis is a perfectly-paced extended player themed on the ideal of Platonic solids, an elegant theory whose aesthetics have delighted mathematicians and architects for millennia.
[Release page] As M-PeX, Lisbon’s Marco Miranda gingerly places his pot-bellied Portugese guitar among rubby dubstep bass and rhythms and modest but melodic laptop electronica. The Portugese guitar is of course most closely associated with the melancholic urban folk of the fado, but the paradigm shift to a digitalized metropolitan sound is seamless, fitting as smoothly as the hypermodern, new clinical research park, the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown fits the prospect of the White City. Aside from the coolest name a research center ever had, it offers Libson a new focal and vantage point while complementing its stark-white, organic charm.
Fitting for the analogy, Ignis is a perfectly-paced extended player themed on the ideal of Platonic solids, an elegant theory whose aesthetics have delighted mathematicians and architects for millennia. His five tunes, each almost exactly five minutes long, are just as elegantly performed with sensitivity and repetitive themes, and his synthetic washes are pastel-coloured and see-through. M-PeX’ laptop works particularly well on the fourth, title track, matching the tactile, rhythmic drag of a virtual needle across virtual vinyl to rub up against the guitar´s vibrating strings. And the lively percussion on “Eter” closes the album with a whiff of old, Moorish Algarve.
Available through netlabel Enough Records, a handsome, slimline physical release can be ordered directly from the artist via email.
