Maifersoni - Telar Deslizante

Telar Deslizante, Maifersoni
Michita Rex, Chile
Rating: 71
By Carlos Reyes

Any kind of abstract expression is better appreciated when there’s texture involved, starting with the fact that surface alone is hard to scratch. Maifersoni’s debut album Telar Deslizante has the consistency of a pile of grain in the loom, an album hard to describe. It isn’t really fair to speak about it in terms of layers or chops; it’s more of a carefully crafted mess with skuzzy to breath-taking ideas. This album is also emblematic to its label Michita Rex, which despite only having a few releases on their catalog, can already claim to have its own audiovisual aesthetic.

Like many experimental records, Telar Deslizante defies the idea of a pop record. The notion that every non-classical record is a pop album is outrageous to say the least; artists can make albums with personal non-linear structures and triumph. Think of Animal Collective and then Emilio Jose, yet you’re nowhere near Maifersoni’s sonic compass. The album opens with a wonderful 3-track sequence fully connected, the tissue attaching “Ñuble”, “Nomade”, and “Caterpilar” is the only sign of structure in the album. Particularly in the heart-trenching “Nomade”, the standing mystical piece in the album that gets everything right; the gripping bells, the division of the beats and the alerting waves. The grasping density in “Las Placas” sums up the albums quest to a random freedom, gathering all the elements and fabrics and giving fortune a chance.

In “Caterpillar”, the bundle of sonic leisure adds folk into the mix, like only the Chileans can do it (+ Sufjan Stevens of course). Many of the album’s pieces suffer from an excess of clothing, victims of the industrial noise phenomenon (“La turbulencia quiere hacernos levanter hoy” shows sometimes it does work). It's flawed because it's over-stuffed. Film experimentalism has found a stable audience, music experimentalism hasn’t. My advice is, when approaching Telar Deslizante, see it as a Lars Von Trier film; appreciate the slightest movement, the silence moments and every incoherent second. But be warned, this might be your first experience with digital drugs.


♫♫♫ "Caterpillar"