The almighty Facebook music guru and palladium of marvelous sonic recommendations Tony Ruiz has dedicated some beautiful works to Мать Может Я on occasion of its cassette release on Holy Hoof Records and Philatelia Records.
Here’s what he has to say about the record:
Transcendental work of the labels Holy Hoof and Philatelia, which have just initiated a cooperation to release experimental guitar works in cassette format. The series opens with the reissue of Xisco Rojo’s 2022 album, with an unpronounceable title, Мать Может Я («Mother may I» in Russian), sequel or «placenta» – according to Xisco himself – of his previous album, Transfigurations (2021).
Transfiguration is a term of Christian origin, used in the 60s by John Fahey, ironically pointing out the spell hidden in the guitar, which converts certain essences into diffuse entities, of an immaterial nature. In this sense, those of Мать Может Я are also «transfigurations», although more «raw and visceral», to further paraphrase Xisco’s own clarifications regarding the recording.
We are faced with a barely contemplative crackling, if anything only in the intros and some outros. All you have to do is listen to the cutting ragas of Red Smoke from The Lake / Sargantella, whose core could be reminiscent of a less ethereal early Peter Walker, or of the idiomatic precariousness of a more sour Seventh Sons. We encounter a hardened line at the very beginning in the vehement rubs of Birth Canal, or in the surrounding and implosive drone of Hellmouth, a nuclear electric (and with drums) essay, in the most radical sense of the term nuclear.
The physics of the «terrain» are idiosyncratic in Rojo: the wood and the strings, the pure instrument, embedded in an interstice that surpasses the symbolic, becomes aerial and detached. To achieve such disembodiment, the contribution and friction of other instruments is not insignificant. For example, the strings of Natsunoowari which, as in a koto drift by Robbie Basho, captures an apparently carefree conversation, a tune of an excursionism that is as calm as it is visionary.
Details and powers that, barely noted in Transfigurations, are displayed here with genuine necessity: the openly subjugating Hindustani slide of the homonymous theme, with a steely coda leading to a chilling exhaustion; the banjo dance of Anandamides, the most spirited (not even two minutes) affair on the entire album; or Ballad Of The Ninety-Nine Days, almost a slide ostinato for Weissenborn, with a synth drone in the background. The magnetism is such that in some passages, between the comings and goings of the bottleneck (just arrived from Fahey’s San Bernardino birthday), the instruments get confused. The enhanced atmospheric effect of what seems like rubbed bowls in Flares On High Seas, almost overwhelming the listener, ends the cassette in the midst of stupor.
If in Transfigurations Rojo allowed himself to be abducted by a syncretic guitar, at times cryptic, meditative and reflective, rich in passages to other continents and magnitudes, Мать Может Я, stubbornly dry, sharp, with hardly any flourishes and with intense outputs, maintains his ancestor a vigorous prolixity in the treatment of sound. Inside and outside the guitar’s sound box, with Xisco Rojo it feels like nothing is ever left to chance.
Grab your copy of Мать Может Я here:
https://philateliarecords.bandcamp.com/
https://holyhoofrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://xiscorojo.bandcamp.com/