Once covering an area of nearly 24,000 square miles, the rolling tides of Central Asia’s Aral Sea were home to seafaring expeditions in its heyday. Now, its basin is a depleted stain on the desert floor, having surrendered itself completely to Russian weapons testing, industrial runoff and little to no care for environmental preservation.
“Cantos Al Aral Menguante,” the latest track from Berlin-via-Barcelona experimentalist Don The Tiger, is a eulogy to the lost stories; the squandered potential of the Aral Sea. Just like the Aral’s ghosts of sailors past, an estranged vision of Cuban bolero haunts Don The Tiger, presenting us with this new visual outing ahead of Matanzas, out on October 19 via Crammed Discs.
The Tiger — a.k.a. Adrián de Alfonso — finds himself lost in the not-so-depleted sea of humans in Barcelona’s streets and beaches, searching, searching, and searching…but never finding. As plinking percussion and morose strings plod by at a glacial pace and Alfonso’s foreboding voice fills the dark lounge-y corners of our imagination, only skeletal memories of bolero, rumba, and Catalan Sardana remain. Matanzas, as a whole, reimagines such traditional musical practices with Alfonso’s motley lexicon of no-wave dabblings, musique concrete and video game music.
“Matanzas delves into issues that matter to me, such as loss, impossibility of change, unwholesome desire, and love, but also a narration unfolding between salt and foam,” writes The Tiger. Watch the music video for “Cantos al Aral Menguante,” the first offering from his delightfully seasick musical journey, below — and pre-order the full album here.
Matanzas tracklisting:
01. Cantos Al Aral Menguante
02. Derrengados En La Arena
03. Nueva Danza Gallinácea
04. La Línea Toda
05. Ojos Secos Como Cuernos
06. Rezongo En El Guadual
07. La Decimoquinta Fiebre De Arturo Vélez
08. Hojas Tiene
09. Hágase Usted Cargo, Sir Henry
10. Boomerang
11. Domingos De Palafrugell
12. Querido Asaeteador
13. Taxi
More about: Don The Tiger
