The cover art, a haunting snapshot of disparate, Sunday best individuals with their faces blackened out, is a fitting visual for Lúnula, as the quartet of Ruth Barberan (trumpet, speaker and microphones), Alfredo Costa Monteiro (accordion and objects), Ferran Fages (electronics) and Margarida Garcia (electric bass) aka Octante spend a tremendous amount of effort disguising their instruments and stripping away all idiosyncrasy during this ghostly, hour-long set.
With a fey burst of feedback, the group enters into a gently churning electroacoustic display somewhere between Scanner and Einstürzende Neubauten; a machine shop at half-staff, or a construction site over the horizon, or the whirring interior of an aged hard drive. The group coalesce breathy mouthpiece-on-percussion-skin, muted bass rumbles, half-plugged patch cords, decaying whistles, ham radio simulations, purring fingerless accordion, metal dragged across surfaces and piquant beating formed from barely detuned tone generators — anything but playing it straight, a slew their respective music/sound technology teachers would frown upon. Only towards the climax point of each piece does the group speak up and relatively circumvent their palette against the quiet intensity. At the twenty-five minute mark of "2856/Onda", Garcia, previously the least vocal, groans to life with a tenacious fit of chromatic slides and harmonics, triggering a sputter of hammered rivets and the sound of young people across the globe trying to figure out a clutch for the first time; nearing the end of "2904/Onda", Barberan unexpectedly volunteers a meager yet dramatic melodic snippet (that may or may not be "Taps") just before an onslaught of furious squeezebox and howling distortion takes over.
Once given a chance, the non-representation, sonic economy, unassuming nature and wandering performances invoke an acute, mesmeric attraction, one whose allure is hard to qualify let alone convey. The works are similar to a book with no words — just pages — that you are for some reason commanded to "read" (upon entering a monastery, perhaps?) After some frustration, you reevaluate your goal and soon begin to fantasize shapes in the parchment, appreciate the typeset of the cover and notice the slight nuances of color, roughness and quirk of each blank leaf. In other words, Lúnula is an imagination broadening experience.
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