Murcof
The Versailles Sessions
Release Date: Dec 9, 2008
Genre(s): Electronic
Record label: Leaf
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Album Review: The Versailles Sessions by Murcof
Fairly Good, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 7/10
His reputation firmly assured, Fernando Corona is maturing into one of the most interesting composers of our times. While finishing work on album number three for Leaf (the recently toured Oceano), he also found time to record with celebrated French trumpeter Erik Truffaz. For this release though, we step back in time. Mid-way through 2007, he was commissioned to provide musical accompaniment for an evening fountain display at Les Grandes Aux Nocturnes, an annual festival of light, sound and water at Chateau de Versailles in Paris.
Based on rating 6/10
Fernando Corona isn’t exactly known for hitting listeners over the head with his productions, but even for the man known professionally at Murcof, The Versailles Sessions is a rather spacious- and empty-sounding release. While previous Murcof releases have sampled minimalist and choral works to fit into overriding electronic textures, there is nary a trace of techno to be found on the slowly unfolding arias and harpsichord solos here. It’s a bit jarring, at first, to hear such natural ambience left in the sampled recordings on a Murcof piece.
Opinion: Excellent
Tijuana-based electronic composer Fernando Corona, a.k.a Murcof, is glitch music’s chief melodist. His thing for strings gives his recordings a stately feel, but it’s the deliberateness with which he reorders samples and his acute sense of dimensionality that separates him from the elastic-band beat-twisters who have come to define the post-Aphex era. Murcof’s latest Leaf release, The Versailles Sessions, was composed for the Les Grandes Eaux Nocturnes festival in the record’s namesake city.