FEEDBACKS FROM ARTISTS/PRESS: 

Angel Molina: Complex, experimental/radical per moments, dark to the maximum... Adjectives that can scare to more than one. Sincerely, I do not believe that this disc is apt for all the ears. My support for Krater, in search of something more than easy music.

Beat (traxx):  Por fin un disco de clicks & cuts donde los clicks no son un mero elemento decorativo.
Por un lado, hay una unidad conceptual. Luis Ortiz (capo del sello), Cristóbal Montesdeoca y Raúl González en la parte
sonora y Amanda López en la visual parten de los sonidos y paisajes de Canarias (tierra volcánica, de ahí el nombre del grupo) para elaborar un discurso que no tiene nada de folclórico pero sí mucho de orgánico y enraizado en un espacio físico definido. Por otro lado, tenemos una experimentación sin estrecheces que bebe de la música clásica (el piano tiene un papel preponderante), particularmente de Satie y los impresionistas, de la música concreta de Pierre Schaeffer, de la protoelectrónica de Jean-Jacques Perrey y Louis & Bebe Barron (la bso de Planeta prohibido) y los glitches de Alva Noto. Un trabajo solemne, grave y elegante. Y espeso e hipnotizante como la
lava. Llorenç Roviras

Vital weekly: …Krater is also a trio, with Ortiz playing electronica and samples, along with one Raul Gonsalez on samples, efx and textures and Cristobal Montesdeoca on piano. This is indeed much more CD music than vinyl. The piano playing is at the middle of the playing, and around it fly the particles of electronic sounds. The piano is sampled and pitched up and down, but also along with this sampling there is all sorts of crackles, hiss, static and the other usual components of microsound. Less than Noto and Sakamoto this is about rhythm and the textures of Krater are much more freely played. Sometimes tones do form a sense of rhythm, but it's even more minimal, just a bass bump, a high peep, but that's not the big thing. If Eno and Budd would have the same technology and still be working together than their ambient albums could have sounded like this. Quite ambient but also rather experimental, and a combination that works rather well here.

Adrian Elmer (cyclic defrost, australia) : I found this album interesting at first. Repeated listens, however, have dragged me right under its spell. Right now I’m listening through for the fourth time today. It has seeped under my skin and is stuck there.

Album opener, ‘Monogenetic’, works as a kind of overture - it introduces a few key ideas as seemingly random static and bursts of hum start to form into mellow rhythmic patterns. It doesn’t give the overall aesthetic of the album away, but certainly puts you into the right mindset. From here, acoustic piano is the dominant recognisable instrument. The playing is quite harmonically traditional and simple with no grandiose technical workouts. Melodies are built on basic two or three chord progressions with plenty of space to breathe. And while the ear’s first reaction is to try and concentrate on the piano playing, it soon becomes apparent that the piano serves as the canvas on which the actual details can rest. Samples of vinyl noise, delayed digital glitches and scratchy rhythms establish themselves as the main features. It’s a slick inversion of the usual pattern of field recordings and rhythms being used as the texture underpinning the traditional playing. As the album progresses, the piano itself starts being sucked into the foreground - brief looped samples, often grabbed with the attack of the played note removed, heading into Steve Reich territory. ‘Piroclastic’ utilises this process to build incredible tension before new piano patterns interact and the loop releases into warm static. The album also contains a surprisingly robust, though never punchy, bottom end which adds incredible weight to the otherwise fragile sounds.

The group is a three piece from the Canary Islands of Spain, with links to Berlin, consisting of Luis Ortiz, Cristobal Montesdeoca and Raul Gonzalez and are augmented by the visual artist and filmmaker Amanda Lopez. Their stated aim for this release is to explore the interactions between harmony and noise, hence the album title. They have succeeded. It’s a simple premise from which grand work has been created.