MYSTERY SEA 20 | Cría Cuervos | [Leitfossilien] ARTWORK front back INTRODUCTORY WORDS - "Your voice humming in my blood, as cells collapse and your bodies disintegrate - a shell museum, sea fossils on the mountain's back, dried starfishes on the sidewalk. Taking shelter there from the sweetish stench of hospital rot, our late night reunion, your lulling me to sleep." - Eugenio Maggi, February 2005 PRESS RELEASE Behind Cría Cuervos is italian artist Eugenio Maggi... The name of his musical project is a direct reference to Carlos Saura's movie of 1975 depicting a childhood world torn between reality & imagination, an elliptical universe where each detail is thrown into relief in a devious way... an apt metaphor for how Cría Cuervos'music operates onto our mind & senses... - After some early analogue experimentations (1999), Cría Cuervos refined its aural techniques to brew gradually more visceral, layered & enthralling soundscapes, often incorporating real sampled sources & unexpected, mutated field recordings... This was confirmed by an impressive debut on IMMANENCE ("Cancroregina"), and more recently by a split work & netlabel release with Sparkle In Grey ("The Coldest January") on SINEWAVES/Ctrl+Alt+Canc - "Leitfossilien" is all low drawn late night pulses, an helix structured movement, a long addictive trace of sound disfiguring its support, like a cryptic & forgotten imprint... a song of ancient shells & memories trapped, reverberated in tranquil, resurgent waves... a growing fluidic embracing entity... - "Leitfossilien" is a viral sea with a metabolism of its own... an ascent to some pure hidden, unspoken language... an alcove experience with transfiguring strength... TRACKS 01. Leitfossilien > unrar + listen ! LENGTH 33'52 REVIEWS CHAIN D.L.K.|Andrea Ferraris Rated : 4 stars out of 5 This release follows Cría Cuervos appearance on the split sampler (together with Bio and The Beautiful Schizophonic) on the portuguese label Thisco. This new cdr is out on Mystery Sea and if you never heard about this label I think you'd better give a check to their full catalogue. I think this guy is on the right way to find his "personality" or at last that's my impression while listening his "concrete-isolationism" or maybe "field-droning" is better. Call it the way you want but the matter of "Leitfossilen" remains the same: no "melody" (just some distant drones completely absorbed by the audio "landscape"), every once in a while the scenario is randomly (not so "randomly" anyhow) crossed by new sound-sources kept in a constant and slow evolution. There's a great "bushido" (read "self-discipline") sensation carved inside these suites. Imagine Main gone "bad", or the isolationist answer to the "H.I.A.+Biosphere" project, and what if I say Thomas Köner and Eclipse caged in the ice of the arctic sea? This music somehow presents a constant duel between the composer's idea and the patience of the listeners and you can bet Eugenio Maggi should have had a lot of fun while trying to bring the listeners into a "desolated place". This record is far from the "music where something is happening all of a sudden" idea, elements are slowly and accurately combined like if it was a classical-piece. Köner once said: "My music becomes fully connected to my retirement from external life", I can't say if Cría Cuervos has the same opinion about his music, but that's the impression that "Leitfossilen" can give. chaindlk Connexion Bizarre |Sandswept Rated : 8 out of 10 "Leitfossilien" is a biological journey, and Cría Cuervos is a master of evolution. Vast and intangible, its processes creep forward on a molecular level, shedding light into the deepest recesses of a virtual sea rich with amino acids and raw elements. There is no rhythm here, and no need for it either. Cría Cuervos has established a set of sounds on a trajectory that offers tribute to life at its most detached and timeless. "Leitfossilien" filters into audible perception with a barely discernible hissing that steadily grows in intensity and prominence, trailing in its wake the ageless primordial hum that ultimately defines this 33-minute examination of pure ambient fluidity. The movement of sound is ceaseless; a tidal flux that cycles gently and patiently through one crescendo after another, each time draining away like water across an expanse of sand. Mild, directionless drones are suspended delicately in the air, hanging for minutes at a time before washing away in the bottomless ether, while muffled pulses sporadically knock against the baffles of this planetary petri dish. Later, distant cataracts splash and rage as monolithic rumblings permeate the underlying layers. Though the nature of water is to constantly move and reshape itself, water inevitably allows a sense of permanence as well. Geologically speaking, aqueous matter sometimes hardens to stone and remains for eons, projecting into the future transmuted biological and organic elements through the collaboration of time and minerals. What Cría Cuervos has accomplished in "Leitfossilien" is a digital record of life itself, illuminated as fossils might be from unimagined ages past. connexion bizarre VITAL WEEKLY 467|Frans De Waard I am not sure if the demo I referred too when I reviewed Cría Cuervos 'Immanence' in Vital Weekly 423, found it's way to Mystery Sea, but it might very well be. Cría Cuervos returns to that first release with this new work 'Leitfossilien': that of deep ambient music. In one, thirty-three minute track, he depicts an obscure cloud of sound that moves throughout the piece from dark to light. It's like a stroke of paint: filled with paint at the beginning and slowly, when putting the paint on paper, the paint disappears. Something similar happens with this music. It starts out in total darkness and ends in total light. Not that it is all that minimal of course, things move in and out, there is even a slight touch of rhythm here and there. It's hard to tell what Cuervos is using here, soundwise, but I am sure it's a whole bunch of software synthesizers and time stretching on probably the simplest of sounds. Not that it really matters of course, the result is what counts, at least to me. And that is fine enough! vital weekly TOKAFI |Tobias Fischer  --- NEW ! Back on the release day of this album, Mystery Sea was already “the ECM of ghostly ambient sounds”, but not quite yet the household name it has turned into by now, with many of its strictly limited releases selling out quickly and with most fans of drone-related music almost buying on a subscription base. Which could be why “Leitfossilien” is currently still available and may have been “a bit overlooked” as label boss Daniel puts it. At a time when Eugenio Maggi is stepping up the pace with a couple of new solo releases as well as a slot as one of the artists on the formidable “Desert Space” compilation, it is indeed a good moment to take a new perspective on his Cría Cuervos project and this unusual work. Not just unusual, it has turned out quite remarkable indeed, for several reasons as well. First of all, the typical wideness and spatial feel are noticeably absent, the sound sources perfectly abstract with the exception of the occasional morphed cymbal pad and a field recording of wind and bubbling noises which enters the action at times. Then there is the simultaneity of shortness and length, the disc consisting of a single track spanning thirty-three minutes. Within this compact vastness lie both recognizable elements and even certain leitmotifs (possibly a hint at the album’s title, which was furthermore inspired by a morbid poem penned by Maggi himself), as well as stretches of almost complete silence and subcutaneous events, when the music hasn’t come to a complete standstill, but moves almost without sound on soft dark slippers. The aforementioned poem also mentions” our late night reunion, your lulling me to sleep." and without doubt “Leitfossilien” is at least partially about the state between waking and (perchance) dreaming, the mind fading into near-oblivion and the void, before surfacing into a drowsy slumber and short clearness, only to lapse back into physical reality again. The deeper end of the sonic spectrum is of minor importance here, keeping the tension simmering all the time, as long-drawn sighs and faint streaks of light colour a white canvas against a fog-clad horizon. There seems to be a touch of eastern philosophy at work, with each tone being awarded equal importance, each new note waiting patiently until the former has died down. It is a constant transformation of the same elements Cría Cuervos is staging here and the greatest achievement is that he makes these cycles seem different each time around. Maybe the outward softness and inner fidgetiness of “Leitfossilien” were too subtle at first to make this an instant success. Now both Mystery Sea and Eugenio Maggi have gone on to establish themselves as noteworthy factors on the scene, there may well be a chance of more listeners trying this on despite their initial reservations. And that would be a great way for this record to receive the appreciation it deserves. tokafi >>> back to the Reviews index [^]