Despite, if not because of, the fact that David Virelles’ Transformación del Arcoiris was born in a time of social distancing, it feels close enough to smell the creativity in its breath. With a borderless aesthetic that pushes two hands outward for every foot planted inward, it treats the canvas of an album not as blank but as a living surface whose own imperfections must be articulated in the spirit of truth. As much an ambient sound collage as a musical object, it grinds expectation in the respective mortar and pestle of future and past until a mélange of the present reveals its fragrant spice. Playing a Roland Juno-6 synthesizer, piano and sampler and accompanied by Los Seres, a virtual percussion ensemble programmed by himself, Virelles begins the circle with “Cause and Effect,” in which the sounds of chickens activate a schism between history and its erasure. As in other tracks that follow, but especially the concluding “Fin del Cuento,” a found-sound aesthetic prevails. While there are moments of transcendence, including the sun-drenched blush of “Holy City,” there’s a sense that shadows are always lying in wait for the chance to sink their teeth into progress. It’s as if our pre-pandemic state was digital and the new normal was analog. Sensations of flesh and flora meet in “Babá la Paloma,” the tropical climate of which yields two distinct seasons. In the dry we encounter the goodness of “Tiempos” (made all the dreamier by guest Marcus Gilmore on MPC drumkit) while in the wet we inhale the spores of “De Cómo el Árbol Cantó y Bailó” as if they were life itself. Each of these requires the microscope of an ear and nowhere so magnified as in the cinematic wonder of “Babujal.” Here the piano feels like a relic in a sea of orchestral trembling. Virelles is always exploring, examining and analyzing genealogies that have lodged themselves within. This is music that does more than stand at a crossroads; rather, it ties those roads into a bow until their beginnings and endings are one and the same.

Transformación del Arcoiris is available on bandcamp.

(This review originally appeared in the November 2020 edition of The New York City Jazz Record, a full PDF of which is available here.)