But guitarist/songwriter/producer Carlos Villalobos doesn't just add Spanish guitar to dance music; he fashions dance music around the instrument's aesthetics. The opening movement "La Sombra/Mi Tierra" begins with a series of percussive patterns: the scratching of fingernails against strings, interlocking castanets rattle, clapping hands and slaps on wood. In the midst of this richly layered rhythm, the guitar seeks its melody and bounces ideas off the fluid architecture of the sound. Midway through the album, the rhythms grow faster and harder and the textures (more techno here, more industrial there) thicken. In the end, "Goodnight" serves as a peaceful coda to a dark journey that's as extraordinarily subtle and human as the instrument at its heart.
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