Ricardo Donoso – Progress Chance
Ricardo Donoso’s Progress Chance is a synthesizer based, kosmische Musik influenced album that has has everything you could ask for. The tracks burst into spiraling chords, arpeggios and lush pads. If this would be floating above beat patterns, it would perfectly work in an early after-hour set. But also as a pure listening experience the pieces develop an intense hypnotic strength.
This may all sound too familiar. The last one or two years have been packed with such kind o releases, but this is slightly different. Donoso’s swirls and arpeggios are a little more pronounced and accentuated as your usual Kosmische stuff. The bass has more thump, the vocals snippets floating around in the stereo field, add a lot more depth without sounding cliché. Where others sound muddy and a bit murky to add this 70s tape feeling, Donoso sports a more clean sound that still doesn’t come across overproduces or ridiculously polished – it just flows so elegantly. Plus the detail of the recording is amazing. Tiny bits emerging here and there, flickering for a while before the disappear in the aether agin.
The only thing that irks me, is the track length. The tracks could have been a little longer as most of the piece don’t reach past the 4:30 minute mark. I wonder how much more immersive the tracks would have been, if the would have had more time to draw in the listener even deeper. Morning Criminal, with a length of 8:20, the only “longer” track, gives a a good hint. The eerie, spooky sounding, suspense driven piece spirals around itself adding layer over layer on top of each other. But still the track manages to stay open and wide without being overcrowded with sound. Probably the center piece of the release.
If Cliff Martinez together with John Carpenter were to make a beat-less score, it would probably sound a lot like Progress Chance – epic, yet dark at times, but still catchy and euphoric.
