Tone Glow 125: Rafael Toral

An interview with the Portuguese musician about kung fu, his evolution as an artist, and the jazz standards that informed his new album 'Spectral Evolution'

Rafael Toral

Photo by Vera Marmelo

Rafael Toral (b. 1967) is a Portuguese artist who has spent the past four decades crafting the music that he’s longed to hear. Inspired by bands like Bauhaus and Cocteau Twins, he joined the post-punk band Pop Dell’Arte as a teenager. At the same time, he was gaining interest in the works and ideas of Brian Eno. He would create drone and ambient music with his guitar, the first of his compositions appearing on his debut solo album, Sound Mind Sound Body (1994). He would continue to refine his practice over the next few years on albums like Wave Field (1995), Aeriola Frequency (1998), and Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance (2001).

After these records, Toral had felt that he had exhausted the paths taken with this style, and eventually began working on the Space Program in 2004. This years-long project saw him playing and recording electronic music “in a way that is more concerned with the musician than with the instrument.” Various release came about from this fruitful time, such as Space (2006) and the three Space Elements releases (2008-2011). He would consider Space Solo 2 (2017) the final project in this endeavor. His newest album, Spectral Evolution (2024), is a culmination of all his musical experiences to date. It is, in his words, “the most difficult and ambitious record” that he’s made, and it is built on a foundation of classic jazz harmonies. In particular, he looked to two jazz standards: George Gershwin’s “Rhythm changes” (from “I Got Rhythm”) and Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the “A” Train.”

Spectral Evolution also marks the first album in over two decades to appear on Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai label. Toral and O’Rourke have played with each other over the years, and you can hear the work they’ve made on records like Electronic Music (2010), which was initially recorded in 1997—around the time when O’Rourke introduced Toral to modular synthesizers. Toral has performed with a multitude of musicians throughout his career, from Sei Miguel to Phill Niblock, Alvin Lucier to Christian Marclay, Chris Corsano to Evan Parker. He was also a part of MIMEO, an electroacoustic free improvisation group that counted Keith Rowe, Peter Rehberg, Christian Fennesz, and Jerome Noetinger as members. MIMEO’s most important albums are The Hands of Caravaggio (2002) and Lifting Concrete Lightly (2004).

Joshua Minsoo Kim talked with Toral on February 17th, 2024 via Zoom to discuss moving to the mountains, the Space Program, gardening, and the jazz influences behind his new album.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: How’s your day been?

Rafael Toral: It’s been an unusually busy Saturday. I made some soup and some bread, and I had an online pilates class. I couldn’t go in person because my wife needed the Jeep. And now I’m doing this interview.

I know that you practiced Zen meditation and yoga, and that you did Wing Chun—a style of kung fu—too. I don’t know if you’re still doing these things, but when did you start focusing on these practices?

When I turned 35, I had to decide how I was going to age—like, what relationship was I going to have with my body? This was with regards to food, posture, and all aspects of caring about my body. There was a period where there was a spiritual longing, which happened simultaneously with me yearning to leave the city. So I was involved with the meditation practices with a group here, more or less at the same time that we moved. A few years later, it fell apart. Some of the teachings were very sound and have remained with me with regards to the overall change I went through. I didn’t really keep a meditation practice, although I miss it sometimes.

There was also a kung fu master doing Wing Chun, and I took lessons for more than a year. It really changed the way I was aware of body movements. Like, when I bend over to pick something up, I use my knees. It’s different. It got embedded in my muscle memory. Although it’s more geared for defense and fighting, I was never interested in pursuing that, at least as something to master. I don’t take classes anymore; they’re far away. This happened during a time when I practically stopped making music. I was in the process of moving to the mountains here, and there was a lot of construction involved with the garden and for cleaning everything. For about two years, there was no music being made. But ever since I started working a lot more, there hasn’t been time for everything.

Where specifically did you move?

It’s on the same latitude as Coimbra but about 60 kilometers east, so it’s more inland.

You mentioned this was happening when you were around 35, so this would’ve been before the Space Program and after Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance (2001), right?

35 is when I became aware of the aging process. Everything with movement was much later—I was around 45. This was around 2014, so the Space Program was already under way.

Did these practices affect the way you approach your electronics or guitar?

I wouldn’t say they did technically or formally, but there was an impact in terms of performance, especially with Wing Chun. Something I always admired about dancers is how, when they walk, it looks like their whole body is aware of each step; there is a grace to every movement. It’s like you’re able to spread this intelligence all over your body, in a way that is entirely conscious—that’s how it looks from the outside. I feel a little bit of this body awareness… like when you’re walking, you become aware of the steps in some way. It’s not a casual thing, but it’s not like there’s any choreography involved. When I’m performing electronic instruments, there’s an awareness of the movements that are involved in the performance. I don’t exaggerate the movements, but should there be any grace in them, there’s a bit of focus there.

This makes sense to me. I think about when I first learned about John Cage and how that completely shifted the way I think about all sound in general. There’s an attentiveness. And a similar thing happened when I got into perfumery and fragrances; that changed the way I think about all scents in the world. And what you’re talking about here sounds similar, where in having practiced Wing Chun, you’re more attuned to the specifics of bodily movement.

I was a huge fan of John Cage in my early years, and I absorbed all that information early on—all those Zen teachings, principles, and practices—even without having engaged with meditation or any spiritual practice. The kind of spiritual posture you have in accepting the results of an artistic action—that was originally informed by meditation and teachings related to Zen. I didn’t know that at the time, but I thought it was amazing. And when I first read Brian Eno’s liner notes for Music for Airports (1978) and Discreet Music (1975), and this was before I heard the albums, he had set up this process and it was really interesting. I was like, wow, I need to do something that functions in this way. This was when I was 15 or so.

I am curious about this early phase of your life. You were born in Lisbon in 1967, which means you were around seven when the Carnation Revolution happened. Is that something that sticks in your memory at all?

I had no experience of what happened in the streets, with tanks and everyone downtown. I was in school at the time, and I remember that the schoolteacher gave us the news and we had this assignment of making a drawing to celebrate the revolution. There was this whole imagery of tanks and machine guns with carnations. That kind of imagery was around, but my parents were conservative and weren’t really excited about it. They weren’t against it either, but I didn’t have any sense of engagement with these events from my family. There was practically nothing there.

I know you picked up the guitar when you were 12, and that you eventually wanted to be a musician but that your parents were against it. In the ’80s, though, you were a part of Pop Dell’Arte and SPQR. What was it like to make this music as a teenager?

I can’t say that my parents were against it, but they were concerned I’d be distracted from studies and from pursuing a normal life. When [the decision to become a musician] came up, I was old enough to start being concerned about getting a job or finishing studies. My family wasn't seeing a lot of progress in those areas so they were not encouraging. At the time, when I started playing in bands—this was in 1985, so I was 18 or 19—I was still living with my parents and going to school. It was exciting and easy because you wouldn’t have to worry about getting paid and paying rent. We did it because it was fun; we were reenacting bands that we loved at the time. It was exciting to pick up an instrument that related to music that we listened to.

What sort of bands were you into?

I was listening to these ’80s post-punk bands like Echo & The Bunnymen, Bauhaus, and Cocteau Twins. I was an especially big fan of Bauhaus.

What was the turning point that made you recognize that you should go from being in these bands to pursuing your own music? I know that some of the music on Sound Mind Sound Body (1994) was being worked on by the time you were 19.

I had parallel journeys. One of my bandmates from SPQR, the bassist, was into Brian Eno. He showed me a few of the records he had and I found them really interesting. SPQR had this tendency towards dronier stuff.

This was Zé Pedro Moura?

Wow, yeah. You did your homework. So after a while he lost interest and I was already working on new material for the band, and at some point the band fell apart and I kept working on that material. And then I realized I could work under my own name. That was in the summer of ’87. I was actually working on the drone pieces that would make it onto Sound Mind Sound Body, but I was still listening to those bands and I continued playing with Pop Dell’Arte.

What was it like to put Sound Mind Sound Body out into the world?

I didn’t think much of Sound Mind Sound Body as I was doing it. I had all these ideas in my head about composition processes. Like, those drone pieces have a very simple compositional device that was made possible by the minimalist composers, where there is an arpeggiated chord played at different rates, so the notes would overlay out of sync. It was very clear for me that I wasn’t inventing anything or making any statement or coming up with something that I owned. I was just trying to do something with these ideas that I was fascinated about, that made sense, and that I could do. And there was a good deal of Eno influence on that record.

I felt it was a minor work, like a learning exercise. It wasn’t until recently, actually, that I surrendered to the idea that it was actually, I don’t know, influential—at least to some degree. I never accepted that, and I never knew why people liked this record so much (laughter). I was really proud of the later records, like Violence of Discovery and Aeriola Frequency (1998).

It took a bit to develop those tracks, and I was working with a 4-track cassette recorder. At some point, probably in 1992, maybe, I finally put all these tracks together and decided I’d make an album. At the time, I didn’t even believe that I’d ever make records at all. That seemed really far-fetched. I thought records were things only big artists did. I was just trying to do something that made sense and so I recorded some cassettes. Then I thought, okay, I’ll do a record. And for some time, I sent cassette tapes to labels and I had no results. It was only later that I met Fred Somsen from AnAnAnA. He took the tape and said they would put it out, which was amazing (laughs).

On the album Chasing Sonic Booms (1997), there are liner notes by Bill Meyer—I actually saw him last week at a concert. On the back of the CD, it says that you once told him that “Portugal kills creative musicians.” Did you feel that Portugal wasn’t a place you could flourish as a musician?

We’re talking about the first half of the ’90s. It was pretty hard to get by doing anything—there wasn’t this circuit you could inhabit where you had venues, an audience, and record labels, at least for out-of-the-box music. It was kind of a desert. It was bleak. It only began to take off and change at the turn of the century. You could get by through stubbornness—you could do small shows at galleries or bars. Like, you could do things with an underground spirit, but it was not an environment that was encouraging.

What things did you do, then, to grow as an artist? You mentioned that Violence and Aeriola were two albums that you were proud of during this first phase of your career. You had collaborators on Chasing Sonic Booms and you also joined MIMEO during the late ’90s.

On the thread of drone music, I was interested in possibilities to create more forms and engage in different processes. Aeriola Frequency is a feedback loop and it was inspired by Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room (1969). By the early ’90s I was in touch with some friends, one of whom was Rodrigo Amado and they had a regular practice of playing improvised concerts—free improvisation was uncommon in Portugal. It was a curious idea. I got invited to join in for a few sessions and some of them were live. So between that and the Pop Dell’Arte gigs, I knew Sei Miguel. Through him I learned a whole new dimension to… not only improvisation, but to playing in a way that’s informed by avant-jazz. He became a very important friend and mentor with respect to my ability to play in an improvisation context.

The invitation to join MIMEO was not out of that—I didn’t have any recordings in that vein. There was some curiosity from the programmers at the festival where I joined MIMEO for the first time. And that’s where, in Cologne, we had this fixed lineup for the orchestra. It was Felix Klopotek who booked it. There was some hype about my work in the European press at the time and I guess they were curious what it’d sound like if I joined in. I played guitar and some other gadgets. I was already informed about what was possible, about making sound in a context where there’s nothing pre-arranged.

Something I love about your work, like with the Space Program stuff that you started in the early 2000s, is how so much changes with the context you’re in. Even with the new album, Spectral Evolution (2024), so much changes just because of the fact that you have a bird on the cover. There’s a birdsong-type sound that is heard in, for example, the 2018 Space Quartet album on the track “Lisboa, Pt. 1.” But then on an album like Space Solo 2 (2017) with the first track, “Modulated Feedback 1,” the association I have is with outer space.

And it’s exactly the same instrument.

Exactly. And then on Space Elements Vol. III (2011), the instrument takes on a jazzier bent. I like how your instruments keep taking on a different role depending on the context you’re in, or with the slightest suggestion. It’s a good reminder that so much of improvisation—and this is true of non-improvisational settings too—is not necessarily about trying to completely rip it all up and start anew, but about understanding a single instrument as having so many capacities. With Spectral Evolution, what instruments from the Space Program did you use, and do you mind explaining in layman’s terms how they work?

Every single one. And the ones I used the most are the ones I’ve used the most in the Space Program. These are the ones I toured with solo and that I used in the Space Quartet. Spectral Evolution starts with this feedback from a toy amplifier that has a microphone. There’s this other instrument that’s like a modular synthesizer but it’s actually a feedback path controlled by a theremin antenna. That’s the one that most evokes birdsong, at least occasionally. When I saw the bird photo, I thought, wow, this is the cover.

As I’ve been getting feedback, I’ve been aware of how the image draws association with the sounds. It draws these electronic feedback phrasing instruments and, like a magnet, turns them into birdsong. But it’s not in the music; it’s just how the brain associates the two when looking at the bird photo and listening to the music. If there was a car on the cover you wouldn’t think about birds as easily.

How did the project come about with being on Jim O’Rourke’s label, Moikai? It’s been decades since the label had an album. And I know you and him first started working together decades ago. How did this conversation come about?

This was extremely hard for me to produce and come up with solutions. I had to learn and study and develop a lot in order to make this record. I was stubborn, and while I knew I was on the right path, it looked right but didn’t sound right. At one point I thought I’d write to Jim and send him the version that I had at the time, asking him for criticism. I asked, “Would you give this a listen and say whatever comes to mind?” He said, “Sure, send it along and I’ll give it a listen as soon as I can.” He confirmed that it needed some work but that he liked it a lot. “It was on another level,” he said. He was actually considering restarting Moikai and I was thinking, “No… you can’t be serious.” But he really meant it. I was thinking of proposing to Drag City [the parent label of Moikai] anyway, but he said he would like to do that. And once it was apparent that he was serious, we went on to making it happen.

So what changed between the original version you sent Jim and the final version that’s on the album?

So I sent Jim version 25 or so. This was in December 2021. It took me quite a while. The final version was 56. There were countless changes, and it was all small details. There were some parts that I thought were too long, redundant, or boring. In the beginning, the record was supposed to be one hour long, so I progressively cut sections and made it shorter and shorter. I only kept what was essential. [Editor’s note: the album is 47 minutes and 14 seconds long]. There’s a myriad of things happening all over the record, and I was improving each aspect of every element.

Even after I sent the master, I heard small things that I wanted to change. I had to tell Jim, “Hold on, there are more changes that are coming out.” (laughter). This continued for a couple of months. He was like, “Oh okay, I’ll just sit here in case there’s another version coming.” (laughter). I mastered it myself but I wasn’t 100% convinced that it sounded good enough, so I sent it to Stephan Mathieu, who finished it for me.

I know the album saw you riffing on George Gershwin’s “Rhythm changes” and Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the “A” Train.” How did you approach incorporating these jazz standards into the work?

I’ve been a fan of Billie Holiday since I was a teenager. About 10 years ago, I noticed the arrangements were really exceptional, and I grew fascinated with how the compositions, chord progressions, and arrangements worked, just with how the orchestra moves behind the vocals. I started to pay more attention to that and it felt really special. I didn’t feel it as much with swing music because I couldn’t get as excited about the brass sections. In these classic jazz songs, the way that the orchestration takes the voice into account is a real craft. Those arrangers were at the top of their game in the 1930s, and some of the works are truly sublime.

At some point, Spectral Evolution started coming together in 2017 when I started observing how I was gravitating towards more static music, even within the Space Program. I started considering picking up the guitar again and, at some point, I had this idea of engaging myself in some major work. I knew I couldn’t make a jazz composition because I didn’t have the compositional skills to do that. So I was going to make an abstraction of harmony that used common chord progressions and structures that were used over and over by many different jazz musicians. “Rhythm changes” is one of the most ubiquitous structures in jazz. Charlie Parker alone had several pieces with that same chord progression.

I used other progressions too, and some are not really progressions. Like, a ii-V-I is more of a cadence. And “Take the “A” Train” became a popular chord progression too, though not to the same extent as “Rhythm changes.” It was used in bossa nova songs, like “The Girl From Ipanema.” I thought I would approach jazz harmony as it was understood in the 1930s by means of abstracting forms, using basic building blocks of the music of those times. When you play the record, it sounds like you’ve heard the chords before.

What does this album mean to you after having spent so many years with the instruments you made in the Space Program, and the ideas that came from that?

The Space Program is based around one single idea: trying to propose a way of understanding electronic music, which is not machine-driven but has a more human source in terms of approaching electronic music in an instrumental way. I wanted it to have more in common with jazz than electronic music. I found that this approach could lead to interesting, genuine results. It was absolutely worth pursuing; I did it myself and I thought it was a great idea for people to experiment with. And then the whole period of working with the Space Program went hand in hand with working on the projects with Sei Miguel. A lot of what I learned with him… his direction methods, his ideas about form and the articulation of sound and listening, of silence and space. He had a lot of influence in exploring those aspects.

I made a map of possibilities and fulfilled them, and I was left with the impression that this was it. I’ve made my point. This was really exciting and fun to do, and I was really fluent in performing with the instruments, and I was up to the challenge of playing with basically any musician. But at the same time, I thought I was insisting on an idea that I had already proposed. As an artistic statement, it was no longer something that I thought was worth continuing to do. It was fun to play, but any creative practice needs to make sense in terms of what is being given and put forth. What’s the quality of the engagement with the audience and with the culture? At some point, it felt that what I was doing with the Space Program was already fulfilled. I didn’t see any space to develop it any further.

Along with working with these classic jazz harmonies, I had this idea that I would have an album that started with this vision. It was like this parallel between an album and a garden. In classical music or in jazz, when you have a chord sequence and then a melody on top of the chords, the chords will accommodate certain notes—it’ll match the key and the scale and so on. But this garden I envisioned had wild weeds. Gardens, like food gardens, are controlled environments. But I wanted to have the soil, the substrate, as the harmonic ground, and instead of having these plants that were neatly arranged, I’d have a chaotic mess of weeds. So that’s how I had the idea of bringing in these electronic instruments. I thought I could make them sound like they were growing out of the chords. It turned out to be… not that easy (laughter). With some persistence and some studio trickery, I was able to make them talk to each other.

I was inspired by the notion of understanding these electronic instruments as wild entities that tend to function in ways that have more to do with nature than culture. In other words, they would function less with the logic of orchestration and arrangement than with the logic of life, like a rainforest. I had this inspiring idea of watching a rainforest from a distance, and it has this cacophony of living beings making sound.

You mentioned earlier that you have your own physical garden. We talked about your relationship with your body earlier, but I’m curious to know about your relationship with nature.

Living in a city makes it relatively difficult to understand that we are nature. It’s very common for people to say that they long to be with nature, but we are nature—we’re not separate. Living in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the mountains, makes it a lot easier to have that as an everyday awareness. There’s a closer relationship that you have with the environment. I’m watching the same trees every day. I see their branches grow, I see their buds and blossoms. I take care of them, too—if they bend over, I hammer a stake and straighten them out. I take care of the trees a lot that are around here in the forest. And the thing about having a garden is that it’s very magical; you’re really eating what is growing from the soil that you take care of. We do composting, too, and a lot of the waste goes back into the soil. So it’s a feedback cycle. Though, in the last few years, I haven’t been making a food garden because there are a lot of wild boars and they make a mess. But this year, we built a fence and we’re making a garden again.

It’s interesting to hear you talk about electronics and then this facet of your life where you’re talking about this garden.

It’s less related than it may look. It ends up being a coincidence that I live in this environment and that I’m aware and engaged with natural processes. But as far as I’m aware, it’s not a result of living here; I would have these same ideas if I lived in the city. Although, it would probably be more difficult to articulate them so naturally. It’s not like I’m inspired by the environment or so; I’m inspired by aspects of music that I want to see connections between. Living here is not like an input, it’s just the working environment.

Let me show you around. (Toral steps out of his studio to show me where he lives.) So this is the studio, that’s the house, those are the dogs. (Toral walks further to a chair that is placed underneath two trees. There is a tremendous view of the entire landscape). And this is where I sit and smoke a pipe at the end of the day. So yeah, it’s really different working here than in an apartment in a city. (Toral walks back to his studio). And these are the guitars.

Thanks for showing me that. It’s a really beautiful space. Is there anything that we didn’t talk about today that you wanted to talk about?

I don’t think so. I was very excited to talk because I’ve been reading your interviews and I love that they’re so fluid and natural. The tone of conversation is very light, but at the same time it’s not superficial. It’s a really special talent you have to interview in this manner. I was really happy that you wanted to do an interview with me.

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that. I’m not sure anyone’s ever articulated it in that way before. I do like to end my interviews with a question that I ask everyone: Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

I think one of the traits that I like having is that I’m patient. I’m not quite easy-going but I am relaxed. Or at least I’d like to think of myself in that way. But at the same time, I can be controlling (laughter).

Why do you appreciate that aspect of yourself?

It has this quality of sitting still while things swirl around. Not-so-important things come and go, and I don’t get too worried about them. I don’t get angry or disappointed or depressed too easily. Sometimes I hear not-so-favorable remarks, albeit not in a direct way, and they just don’t hit me.

I can sense that from the way you were talking in this interview, too. I enjoyed this conversation, and I think your new album is my favorite thing you’ve ever done.

It’s my favorite too. It’s the best one I’ve ever done.

Rafael Toral’s new album Spectral Evolution is out on February 23rd via Moikai. The album can be purchased at the Drag City website and at Bandcamp. More information about Toral can be found at his website.

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Photo by Vera Marmelo

Thank you for reading the 125th issue of Tone Glow. Wing Chun practitioners unite.

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