Rafael Toral
Rafael Toral is a musician and sound engineer also active in visual arts. Born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1967, he has been performing live since 1984. Having attempted to study music, he realized his path was one of exploration and discovery, to which conventional music teaching was irrelevant. His work focuses mainly on the possibilities of ambient music (variable attention listening process), the electric guitar as a sound generator and improvisation with higher levels of risk (using instruments or systems that behave in unpredictable ways). Exploring relations between sound phenomena such as resonance or difference tones and the human capacity for creative listening, Toral has developed a sound world weaving a unique blend of references such as ambient, rock, chance and improvisation.
Rafael Toral is a musician and sound engineer also active in visual arts. Born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1967, he has been performing live since 1984. Having attempted to study music, he realized his path was one of exploration and discovery, to which conventional music teaching was irrelevant. His work focuses mainly on the possibilities of ambient music (variable attention listening process), the electric guitar as a sound generator and improvisation with higher levels of risk (using instruments or systems that behave in unpredictable ways). Exploring relations between sound phenomena such as resonance or difference tones and the human capacity for creative listening, Toral has developed a sound world weaving a unique blend of references such as ambient, rock, chance and improvisation.
On Air
No Noise Reduction, a collaboration project between Rafael Toral and João Paulo Feliciano, operated throughout the 1990's and early 2000's. In the Summer of 1995, João Paulo Feliciano and myself did a more focused effort on extended improvisation pie…
Cire Noire
*2024 stock* A compilation of contemporary electronic sounds by parallel thinking agents from Europe and US.
Sounding Spaces (9 Sound Installations)
*2024 Stock * English / Japanese Book (Hardcover, 80 pages) with interviews and explanations about the works presented during the exhibition of the same name held @ ICC Tokyo, july 11 - september 29, 2003.
Spectral Evolution
After a two-decade interlude, Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like "Sound Mind Sound Body" and "Wave Field" (both reissue…
Sirocco: A Compendium Of Experimental Music Made In Portugal Vol.2
As famous as the Northern Wind or Mistral, Sirocco is a Mediterranean wind that blows from the Sahara Desert, and is widely responsible for huge and cinematic sand storms, and also for a strange phenomenon called “blood rain”, due to the red sand tha…
Jupiter and Beyond
Jupiter, the gas giant in our Solar System, with thunderstorms a thousand times more powerful than on Earth, rainfalls of diamonds in the atmosphere, temperatures below -100°C, plenty of hydrogen, 79 moons and a South pole that looks like an abstract…
Aeriola Frequency
Black Truffle announce the first vinyl reissue of Rafael Toral's Aeriola Frequency, originally released by Perdition Plastics in 1998. Toral made his name in the world of mid-90s experimental electronics with two releases, Sound Mind Sound Body (1994…
Moon Field
On Moon Field, Rafael Toral breaks new ground, it is his first edition that moves outward, beyond the Space Program series. This collection of three extended and interlocking works, mark the beginning of a transitional period into a new phase. Buildi…
Sound Mind Sound Body (30th Anniversary Edition)
**30th Anniversary Edition. Remastered reissue, first on vinyl** Released in 1994 ‘Sound Mind Sound Body’ decrees the massive impact of discreet gestures; slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty…
Wave Field
**A prescient vision of the next phases of listening space! Remastered reissue, first on vinyl** Released in 1995 ‘Wave Field’ was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in …
Space Collective 2 Live
Space Collective 2 Live commemorates Portuguese musician Rafael Toral’s first U.S. tour in several years. Since the 1990s, Toral has been primarily known for his guitar work, but has since been working on the Space Program project, within which he ha…
Space Elements III
This is the third volume of the Space Program's Space Elements series. In this series, each volume features guests and is focused on a compositional function. The Space Program is a long-term project launched in 2004, for performing music with a p…
Violence of discovery and calm of acceptance
Considered by the Chicago Reader to be "one of the most gifted and innovative guitarists of the decade", Rafael Toral has been developing in the last 15 years a unique sound world, having been as influenced by Alvin Lucier and Brian Eno as by Sonic Y…
Space elements vol.2
'Space elements Vol. II is the fourth release in Rafael Toral's ongoing project, the Space Program. Following the first elements release, this volume features a new set of collaborators: Evan Parker (soprano sax), Manuel Mota (guitar), Afonso Simões…
Space Elements Vol. 1
The third in Rafael Toral's Space Program series of releases - his long-term research project launched in 2004, through which he has unearthed an innovative approach and a complete re-thinking of how electronic music is conceived and experienced. Usi…
Space solo 1
The LP version of the CD released by Quecksilber in 2007. Limited edition of 500, mastered direct to metal and pressed on 200g virgin vinyl.In 2004, Rafael Toral announced that he was to embark on a long term project, which was to be a multi-facetted…
Space
After over 15 years of drone and ambient work based around guitar and electronics, Rafael Toral has set off on a radically new mission. Leaving the guitar behind, Toral has equipped himself with instruments such as a theremin-controlled white noise g…
Sound Mind Sound Body
Rafael Toral's music is guitar based, but doesn't seem to involve any of the usual guitar histrionics. Instead he focuses in on the little details, the expansion of the sustained note. Sound Mind Sound Body is indeed a sustained note; the music is no…
Harmonic series 2
Japanese-only release. Recorded live in Japan in 2003, Harmonic Series 2 is a 43 minute piece for computer generated sinewaves, custom software, guitar and analog electronics. It follows Harmonic Series 0 which was released on Table of the Elements. …