Irrealidades

Irrealidades is the new album from Mexican scene stalwart Bryan Dálvez, El Irreal Veintiuno on Infinite Machine. Although his reputation is well-established at home through EPs and tracks on NAAFI, Subreal and Infinite Machine itself, Irrealidades comes across as his boldest and most cohesive statement yet.

The album is a kaleidoscopic survey of Mexico's rich sonic landscape, as well as an ambitious attempt to encompass the country's historical becoming: from the rich, imagined sounds of pre-hispanic times to its current war-torn reality.

But an academic pursuit this isn't and this is still very much music for the body. From the get-go, drums burn and rhythms gallop; sharp, aggressive synths insist and prod. Un respiro, the album's mid-point gives us exactly that, a breather, albeit an emotionally charged one. Soon enough the second half of the record returns to polyrhythmic fury and ravey turbulence. We reach fever pitch on closer Minorías, envisioned by Bryan as a sonic representation of the eschaton: "the last track is merely the end of everything".

Throughout the record disjointed voices loop endlessly before managing to articulate a single intelligible word. Maybe, Irrealidades seems to say, we are also caught in a loop, unable to break out from the cycle of violence and marching irredeemably (but with healthy curiosity) into The End, when Quetzalcóatl makes his glorious return.