by Paul Jury - Morpheus Music - UK 2006

INDALO - ad21music

STYLE
Experimental ambience echoing with alien winds and peculiar spatial resonance.
Much of Indalo is beatless textural layering, evocative soundscaping, synths sweeping in calm oceanic swells - but there is rhythm too, the deep throb of sonorous pots sending ripples across the sound surface. Indalo is an album of slow graceful variation, beats fade in almost undetected and later evaporate into distant panoramas and empty flatlands, into nothingness. Some pieces abyssal and dark - shadowy gusts and tenebrous currents folding into one another. Environmental effects enliven the rolling, undulating sonic plains alternately suggestive of unfathomable depths or of imminent presence - cicadas, breezes, ambiguous impacts some immense and way down low.


MOOD
The mood here is one of enigmatic seclusion - amorphous structures and ambiguous sound sources stir up visions of remote places, mysterious movement and uncertain isolation.
There is an edgy calm, a sense of soft energy in restrained langour as though we are in the presence of something powerful and beautiful. Some parts of the CD create a feeling of openness, weightlessness as if the listener were a mote on the air of a vast expanse.
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ARTWORK
The front cover of this album is an ambiguous photograph that appears as a crack below a shallow pool or as a twig against the night sky - a glowing orb or a reflected moon is overlaid with leafy textures - Indalo the rainbow man, the man supporting an arc above his head.
The reverse of the sleeve booklet explains the project - the Indalo image found on a sheltered rock face inspiring the music. Inside is a landscape image of the Almeria Province accompanied by brief credits. Track titles are on the rear of the jewel case laid out on a graphically enhanced scenic shot - shot through with that same rocky crack.

OVERALL
Max Corbacho and Bruno Sanfillipo team up here to produce a series of seven pieces built around their impressions from a trip to Almeria in 2001. Hypnotised by the 'strange beauty'
of the landscape and the cryptic Indalo figure, the pair have created in response a transportational sound that holds an almost ritualistic mystique. The gradually evolving soundworlds here tap into the psyche drawing up half-formed images and stirring, shifting impressions. Released on the ad21music label run by Max and Bruno.
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WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM
Indalo will appeal to ambient fans that enjoy dense textures and layered washes - mostly without percussion, yet with a tribal spirit. Go for this one if you enjoy music evocative of breath-taking location, suggestive of strange atmosphere.

Ambient artists Bruno Sanfilippo and Max Corbacho merge their considerable talents for Indalo,
a brooding, eerie, powerful excursion into dark ambient soundscapes peppered with occasional
ethno-tribal rhythms, filled with primal sensuality, and laced throughout with palpable mystery
and ancient ritual.
Use of echo drenched in moisture and field environmental recordings of nocturnal creatures lends the recording a distinct mixture of subterranean and deep jungle evocations, a juxtaposition which works amazingly well and is one hundred percent cohesive.
The album opens with the 22-minute title track, a long expansive slowly developing piece,
filled with deep rumblings, cavern-like sounds that
are both animal and mineral in sonic characteristic and higher pitched whistling melodic drones, similar in character to spacemusic.
Percussion, of the type normally associated with ethno-tribal ambient, infiltrates at the midpoint of the track, played with energy and passion amidst rising and falling swells of drones and washes, but the beats don't stick around long, replaced by warm glowing electronic waves and a scattering of environmental sounds. Six other tracks fill the rest of Indalo with everyting from burbbling fluid effects (heard at the start of The Agave emerges on the dry earth) to spacious vast washes and drones floating over deep but subtle thunder-like rumblings to swirling almost oppressive drones counterpointed by organic-electronic pulses on "Lava Atmospheres" to "Cabo de Gata" which begins somewhat calm and placid with rattles shaken on top of the relatively quiet synths, but building into a dense multiple-layered drone that seems to be everywhere all at once. "A lucid dream of strange landscapes" has an air of desert desolation as the night creatures come forth and the air cools from the overpowering heat of the day and the full moon reveals a landscape carved out of rock and sand and cast in dark illusive shadows.

Indalo is not a recording that can be completely appreciated if played in the background
where some of this album will come across only as so much drones and synths.
The astute listener will either listen to this on excellent speakers in a dark quiet room or at least use headphones to fully absorb the subtle complexity of the mix.
Indalo is highly charged with atmosphere and mood, so the more you can immerse yourself in the sounds from this CD, the more seductive you will find the recording to be.
At times, the mood of the CD is actually peaceful (such as the majority of the closing track "Signs of former experiences"), albeit not syrupy sweet or ethereal, but rooted in the lack of noticeable tension in many places. This CD is an easy recommendation to fans of this
subgenre (darker drone ambient music) unless the person is so averse to some tribal elements
(which are few and far between) that even a hint of their presence would ruin the experience for them. While the CD can be a tad monochromatic at times, as long as you don't expect
it to startle you or invigorate you, you'll be thoroughly satisfied with this album

INDALO - ad21music

With a twenty minute, a fourteen minute and pieces lasting around six-seven minutes,
this is an epic work of space synths music and is inspired by the vast, warm and expansive landscape of the region of south-eastern Spain from which the title is taken.
The photo of the plains and mountains on the inside of the booklet perfectly reflects the music.
Opening with the twenty minute title track, you spend the first five minutes with drifting, building, layering space synths that sound just gorgeous, before this gently rumbling bass
and rolling ethnic percussion rhythms emerge as the synths billow out like cloud formations,
and the effect is simply breathtaking, so that you can close your eyes and almost imagine being under the blues skies and fluffy white clouds, enshrouded in the warm, dry heat of the sun - it's just magical. In many ways this track has a distinctly Steve Roach -esque quality
to it, only probably more varied and even warmer sounding, but as a space synth epic,
it's one of the best of its kind.
Following this, the "shorter" tracks are actually rhythm-free and, if anything, even more spectacular, with huge swathes of space and cosmic synths rising up and filling every corner
of the ether with truly inspirational soundscapes, finally ending on the absolute breathtaking beauty that is the fourteen minute 'Signs Of Former Experiences'.
Overall, one of the best space synth music albums around right now.

"Indalo" is a good example of Deep Ambient.
This album takes us to the immense quiet of wide, virgin spaces.
The structure of the music consists of difused melodies that come and go, dense, atmospheric environments that surround these melodies, and occasional sound effects, that in some passages are an important part of the ambiance.

"Indalo" es un buen ejemplo de Ambient Profundo.
Este álbum nos transporta a la inmensa quietud de los espacios amplios y vírgenes.
La estructura de la música consta de melodías difuminadas que van y vienen, ambienteS
densos y atmosféricos que envuelven a esas melodías, y efectos de sonido ocasionales,
que en algunos pasajes son una parte importante del ambiente

I only became aware of Bruno Sanfilippo this year, as he sent me a couple of his solo works, richly complex music that defies easy categorization as ambient, new age, or something else.
On this release, he teams up with a familiar favorite, Max Corbacho.
We get started right away with the centerpiece, the 20-minute “Indalo.”
Bright feather-light metallic shimmers surround a strange swirling siren song.
Melancholy strings meld into the mix, as does lightly shuffling percussion that gradually grows until it is front and center.
Allowed to dominate briefly, the beat then fades entirely from view, leaving the smoothly spiraling drones in its wake. Birds add a nice touch at the end.
Gently lapping waves mark the seamless transition to track two, a subtly shifting slice of ambience. In the running for my favorite ambient song title is “Lava Atmospheres,”
an expansive piece with deep echoes and just the right degree of graininess and grit.
Even more reverberant is “Cabo de Gata,” firmly in the realms of Steve Roach’s
The Magnificent Void.
I always gravitate toward Roach as a reference point when discussing Max’s work, and this collaboration with Bruno is no exception.
But I never mean it as anything but a compliment. There is plenty of room for Roach and Corbacho in the genre, and Sanfilippo is certainly welcome too, given the fine results here.

INDALO - ad21music

The Argentine Bruno Sanfilippo who lives and works in Spain is a versatile musician.
This versatility can also strongly be heard in the album Indalo that he created in collaboration
with the Spanish ambientspecialst Corbacho.
Corbacho already has made a number of special albums with rather intense music.
In the summer of 2001 Corbacho en Sanfilippo made a trip to Almeria in Spain.
The spectacular nature as well as the historic symbol Indalo inspired them in making this music.
It contains a range of naturesounds from Almeria that are added with the ambientsounds and the nearly ancient rhythms of the duo. This is music where artists like Steve Roach, Robert Rich and VidnaObmana are masters in but in where these gentlemen are also very well at home. The sounds are widely spun, almost like a wave, above the organic rhythms and intriguing atmospheres.
The titletrack of almost 22 minutes, with which the CD opens, immediately takes the cake.
Quietness is an important element in the music on this CD.
In tracks like The Agave Emerges On The Dry Earth and Lava Atmospheres this qietness as a matter of speaking blows around the listener.
This is a very special experience. Cabo De Gata and Petrified Wisdom are rather dark.
The dreamy A Lucid Dream Of Strange Landscapes takes together the concept of the CD very well. Highlight of the album in my opinion is Signs Of Former Experiences that almost has a heavenly atmosphere