JEFRE CANTU-LEDESMA - Tracing Back The Radiance LP

Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. JEFRE CANTU-LEDESMA returns with his third full-length venture on Mexican Summer—Tracing Back The Radiance—a slow, delicate meditation, delving far afield from the pop drenched melodies which have defined his recent efforts. Grown from a few simple piano lines, a need for change, and an evolving process which fell somewhere between conversation, singular vision, and a wild game of exquisite corpse—Cantu-Ledesma acting as contributor, servant, and guiding force to the emerging album’s all-star cast of voices—JOHN ALSO BENNETT, MARILU DONAVAN, CHUCK JOHNSON, GREGG KOWALSKY, MARY LATTIMORE, DAVID MOORE, MEARA O'REILLY, JONATHAN SIELAFF, ROGER TELLIER CRAIG and CHRISTOPHER TIGNOR—the culmination takes a decidedly experimental turn—a vast, ambient landscape of abstraction, texture, and tone—open space punctuated by the restrained harmonics of vibraphone, processing, flute, pedal steel, synthesizer, piano, organ, and voice. With nods to historic high-water marks in ambient and electroacoustic music, as well Italian minimalist pioneers like Giusto Pio, Lino Capra Vaccina, and Francesco Messina + Raul Lovisoni, Cantu-Ledesma delves forward with one of his most ambitious, elegant, and exciting endeavors of his career, retaining every bit of the ease and openness in musical language which has guided him across the decades. A beautiful, immersive, melancholic, and contemplative balm for the troubled times in which it was made.