There is a kind of party that has the rarity and mystery of a beautiful and endangered species, something connoisseurs spend years chasing and are blessed to experience for themselves. The details will vary from person to person, but in many cases this scene may not look much like what the average person might imagine when they hear the words “nightclub”, “rave” or “dancefloor”. Ricardo Villalobos described his version in a 2007 interview. It would be outside, preferably near a river. It would have an extremely clear sound. And, in ways that are hard to explain, there would be outside pressures of the world at large, freed from the tyranny of linear time itself, a place where the attendees—not so much paying customers looking to be entertained as hearty people about anything— back to a state of child's play. Alkatsofareleased at the Playhouse in 2003 and re-released this year at the Perlon, it is both a soundtrack and a transmission from the semi-utopian bubble that has long been his domain.
If music is a language, as Villalobos believes, Alkatsofa is his first poetic work. “I prefer a clear, intelligible, calm voice in music,” he once said. “I don't like fortissimos.” The “understandable” part can be hard to deduce with a record that opens with “Easy Lee,” an after-hours anthem whose lyrics, whined by a Nord Lead vocoder, no one has ever been able to decipher beyond from the title phrase. This sets the tone for an album defined by warped moods and loose, organically evolving arrangements. Emotions come in subtle nuances, from the edgy edge of “Bahaha Hahi” to the quiet determination of “Quizás” (Spanish for “maybe”).
Unlike so much tidy dance music, these pieces unfold according to the unconscious logic of improvisation, meandering serenely despite their fast tempos, introducing elements that appear once and never return and end somewhere different from where they started. There are melodies, vocals, and hooks, but it's the sounds themselves that rise to the occasion – crystalline, incredibly tactile, deftly gelled acoustic sounds with electronic instruments (whose inventors Villalobos honors, along with his family and loved ones, in the album's dedications). . The percussion in particular is flawless, with kick drums (when they appear) like porcelain beads uniting its delicate structures. In a wise reshuffle of the track order, Perlon's reissue ends with “Waiworinao”, a DJ tool made almost entirely of samples from Polish jazz bassist Krzysztof Ścierański, and a dazzling contrast to the austere electronica that came before it .
