Lo Escucho, Lo Pinto
After carving a singular place for themselves in the landscape of British music, via their Stockport, UK, based shop, over the last few years All Night Flight has begun to leave its mark as an equally important label, issuing a handful of left-field sonic excursions that defy the constraints of genre and preconception. While we’ve dug everything they’ve done so far, their latest, Lo Escucho, Lo Pinto’s self-titled debut, is far and away our favorite of their offerings to date. Combining the talents of the Chilean ensemble, Glorias Navales, with those of the Scottish born, Vilnius, Lithuania based artists, improviser, and composer, Sholto Dobie, it’s a stunning piece of work, intertwining delicate sonorities and textural elements to entirely deconstruct the boundaries between experimentalism and song. Issued as a stunning, limited vinyl LP, released in an edition of 300 copies housed in a handmade sleeve, complete with A3 poster, it's a slow burner that delivers in spades.
Lo Escucho, Lo Pinto is Álvaro Daguer, Ivan Daguer, Tomás Salvatierra - all of whom have been met with acclaim for their work in Glorias Navales (Kye, A Wave Press, etc.) - and Sholto Dobie, the Lithuania based musical maverick who has recently been making waves in the underground with performances for homemade pipe organs and other instrumentation. Recorded throughout Chile in January and February 2022, as well as in Los Angeles, Huepil, Concepción, and Santiago - a road record, capturing unannounced performances in public places (parks, squares, streets) - the project departed from the idea of applying free-music logic to the structures of rock & roll, departing from a methodology that retains the tropes and tools of rock, while dismissing its formal constraints in favour of a far more open and experimental framework.
Somewhat reminiscent of Michael David Murphy’s “Tuning '77” sound collage of the Grateful Dead - drawn from material of the band tuning, chatting, and audience noise - Lo Escucho, Lo Pinto’s self-titled debut is an album that turns the notion of song on its head, framing the moments before, after ,and between - the buzz of open strings, the rattle of drum hardware, murmurs of the general public, children playing and barking of stray dogs - into the primary material of its musical works, each becoming a strange and unexpected rumination of Chilean folkloric traditions, paganism, and the art of being in the moment.
Open, airy, and free, Lo Escucho, Lo Pinto’s seven “songs” encounter the four players meandering across the album’s two sides, reacting and responding with a casual sense of focus to each instrumental and environmental happening. The collective outcome - moving at a restrained, glacial pace - is a bubbling expanse of texture and tone; a kind of folk rock experimentalism that continuously flirts with a sense of tense drama that darts and eludes its own becoming, only to draw the ear back toward the towering values found within the most discreet and intimate sound events.
Both conceptually and creatively brilliant, we can’t sing the praises of Lo Escucho, Lo Pinto’s self-titled debut enough. It’s an incredible beautiful piece of work and a crucial document of the remarkable ferment currently transiting within the global experimental underground. Issued by All Night Flight in a very limited edition of 300 copies on vinyl, housed in a handmade sleeve, complete with A3 poster, this is a record not to be missed.
