Luciernaga

J.M. Da Silva, or Luciernaga, trades on a murky brand of ambient drone that squeezes spiritual elements out of the art form. I didn’t even realize that was possible until several years back, when that Riceboy Sleeps 2XLP woke me up to the possibilities. Thing is though, I’ve heard a select few manage the same feat and, what’s worse for my particular situation, I can’t rightly describe what renders one amb-dro a religious experience and another an average tape-pile piece of fodder. The conclusion I’ve come to is that the tape-flippers who are tugging my soul’s strings like that are simply working harder than the rest to bring their vision to fruition. Luciernaga makes it look easy, but he’s pulling levers and sprinkling sugars you almost certainly aren’t aware of, the relatively thin production of To the Centre Of the City In the Night belying its dense, multi-layered nature. You witness an imaginary city coming to life, care of a simple brew of synth, guitar, and voice, and as the compositions slowly take shape the mind can only latch onto small details (the fade-out of an element you didn’t know existed, the high-pitched synth emanations that stand out in the mix, the whirls of sunshine crowding “Sleeping Green-Eyed Girl”). And that’s easily enough to become absorbed in the mainframe of To the Centre Of the City In the Night, circular enough to fool you into listening through two or three times but memorable enough to remain saved in your mental data banks for life.” – Grant Purdum, Cerebrus – Tiny Mix Tapes - Tiny Mix Tapes

– September 7, 2014

“Chilean by way of Brooklyn artist Joao Da Silva has been quietly building an impressive discography of droning guitar electronics that can vacillate significantly between dark terrors and bright, shimmering expanses of sound. These two new limited tapes (one a split release with La Mancha Del Pecado) provide an exceptional overview of his widely varying, yet consistently excellent music.

The split release has Da Silva making an intentional tribute to the earliest forms of industrial music. Packaged in a cardboard box with artwork inspired by Throbbing Gristle’s 7” singles, both he and La Mancha Del Pecado (Miguel Perez) look back to when industrial meant a chaotic, beatless expanse of terrifying sound.

Luciernaga’s stays in a darker place on “Cuartel Terranova” for its duration, mixing deep subterranean rumble with a shuddering vibrato. It retains that dark, rumbling ambience that early Throbbing Gristle worked with. The piece slowly expands, with Da Silva later introducing a noisy crackling to offset the otherwise low end drone, but the piece stays entrenched in sinister, oppressive territory.

On the flip side, Perez first goes for a metallic din reminiscent of Test Department or SPK on “La Gata.” Loud banging noises form a rhythmic framework, buried in echo chamber hell. It is less subtle than the Luciernaga side, and has a lo-fi clipping, microphone in a windstorm overdriven sound to it. The banging noise eventually relents for buzzing synth expanses, then into a harsh power electronics crunch. Perez keeps the piece solidly rooted mostly in noise, but retains a nice rhythmic surge with it.

Tile, an extremely limited cassette that is also available digitally, is surprisingly well documented given its ambiguous nature, with instrumentation spelled out explicitly in the packaging. Rapidly recorded and produced, the result has far more depth than its intentionally unedited and impulsive creation would lead me to believe.

The first side of the tape is the more complex one. Built from variously configured guitars, bowed metal, and a Tibetan prayer bowl, Da Silva opens the piece blending deep swells of blackened dungeon noise with pristine silence. Focusing more on the higher frequencies, the metal scrapes are appropriately creepy and ghostly. He then introduces in the guitar, a blurry haze of notes that do not hide the instrumentation.

He slowly fills the mix in more from here, first with a noisier passage of guitar that adds in a perfect amount of crunch and distortion. Eventually the guitar is replaced with the feedback like tones of the prayer bowl and mournful guitar noise. The other half of Tile is a bit less accessible, consisting of a single second and a half loop of shruti box repeated for over 22 minutes, recorded with the stated purpose of aiding in meditation. It has a flowing, sad melodic flow to sound that helps make its repetitive nature feel more varied than it is.

These two tapes make a wonderful pair to showcase the diversity of sound Joao Da Silva works with as Luciernaga. Sad, menacing, aggressive, and even sometimes light and ambient, his diverse array of talent is clearly on display. The half provided by La Mancha Del Pecado is no slouch either, making for a noise driven counterpoint to Luciernaga’s creeping menace.”

– Creaig Dunton, Brainwashed.com - Brainwashed