Warnecke & Marco – Snake [Canoa Snake Records]

We remember Nacho Marco for his extensive career as a DJ and producer, for being one of the most important Spanish artists in styles such as house and many of its sub-genres, and also for being at the helm of Loudeast Records since 2007. However, his artistic expression has expanded in recent years due in part to his role as an instructor at the prestigious Berklee University.

At the end of 2017 Nacho Marco surprised us with two new projects. His new label Canoa Snake Records was born with a first release by Diamont Dancer, a duo he shares with Pau Roca, guitarist of the Spanish band La Habitación Roja. Shapes is a 7-track album in which the Valencian artist clearly showed us the trajectory of both projects oriented towards electronic, ambient and organic sounds.

Canoa Snake Records is soon to release its fourth reference, an EP in which Nacho Marco once again participates, but this time forming a duo with the North American Pierce Warnecke, a multidisciplinary artist who works in sound and visual environments with installations, compositions and performances.

Rivers is a conceptual album, a 5-track album that evokes the double meaning of life, the contrast between everyday life and the slow erosion suffered by any organism or material exposed to the climatic conditions of our planet. Warnecke & Marco express this antagonism by demonstrating that there is total compatibility between noise and a perfect combination of harmonics, and that digital and analogue can coexist in the same habitat.

In the style of the Dutch composer Arie Maasland, who dedicated a suite to the Rio Negro, the Orinoco and the Chubut, Rivers is based on rivers that flow through Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Athi starts passively, with a slow development that gradually transforms into a dense landscape, in which a desolate melody blends with the consistency that shows its threatening itinerary. Sonically, this track evokes the danger of this African river and its muddy and muddy aspect. Bhima places us geographically in Eastern culture, in a peaceful and meditative context, as optimal for sustaining millions of lives as it is for despoiling them in a single moment.

The following two cuts represent two rivers that coincide in the same region and share the same historical meaning. Clearwater is a name that has been used to name different rivers and tributaries given the simplicity of its meaning, however, we understand that for its transcendental value we have to place ourselves in the western United States and in the magnitude of these natural currents to create new lifestyles and new ways of subsistence for human beings. Sonically, it emerges with a neat, crystalline layer that remains impassive in the background of the track, yet a warm texture in the form of low frequencies is immediately added, as an arpeggiated melody and a series of chords gradually appear. Snake is the river at the confluence of Clearwater, and like the previous one, it is also easily adaptable to other geographical features. Its meandering physiognomy is seen in the continuous mobility of the panorama, as all the sounds that emerge intersect and intertwine with each other, from right to left and vice versa.

Pierce Warnecke and Nacho Marco close the album with a fifth cut that places us between central and northern Europe. Elbe is a river that has survived a multitude of crucial changes in European culture over the last millennia, it has witnessed the construction and annihilation of vast empires and majestic ethnic groups have sailed its waters, which today we magnify for their deeds. This piece manifests longevity, from its beginning, sandy textures are fused with long and solemn registers in different tessituras, with a sub-bass commanding over the rest of the extensive and volatile chords.

Release date: July 26th, 2021.