There's a wealth of activity and detail in Ricardo Donoso’s music. Rhythms, loops, and accents constantly overlap and build. The precision of those intersections is obvious in his clean production style, which gives every element sharp focus. In fact, there are so many fascinating trees in Donoso’s songs, it should be easy to miss the forest. But after I’ve listened to one of his records, I rarely remember something like an pulsing bass line or phrase-turning beat. What sticks is the tone and aura–the atmosphere the music creates and the feelings it induces.
I’m impressed by how much that’s still the case with his latest full-length, As Iron Sharpens Iron, One Verse Sharpens Another. Not that I didn’t expect it—his two previous solo albums, Progress Chance and Assimilating the Shadow, were enticingly atmospheric (the latter is a masterpiece). But compared to those efforts, the eight songs here—split across two vinyl EPs, but released together digitally— are a bit generic. There are more sounds that I’ve heard before or could imagine done by someone else, and there are more overt dance moves where before there were shadows of techno and intimations of house. Yet despite this relative decrease in sonic uniqueness, the effect of Donoso’s music remains powerful. His ability to cast a spell is apparently independent of the specific sounds he uses to do so.
The aura that entrances this time around represents a slight shift as well. Assimilating the Shadow had undercurrents of tension, but for the most part it was hypnotic and dream-like. As Iron Sharpens Iron's tone is darker and more urgent. Rhythms hit harder and more pointedly, as if Donoso wants to stab ears as much as massage them. Where before you could imagine dawn rising to his flowing waves, here the sun is either on its way down or has been out of the picture for a while. As a result, most of the tracks dare you to listen further as the mood blackens and the mystery thickens.
Donoso’s best songs achieve that effect while cycling through many sounds. In the album’s first half, “The Sphinx” stands out with puncturing bass and violent melody, but the next track, “Diagonal Environment”, nearly matches it with a synth ripple that tears the air. The second set of tracks has a more linear ascent: the drifting “The Redeemer” leads to the quivering, horror-film-worthy “Open Drawer, Full of Masks", which in turn births the dark-highway cruise of “The Child Primitive". Soon enough, Donoso has crafted a narrative arc out of what at first seemed simply like consistent music.
All of this leads to the rare kind of closer that’s truly a culmination. Donoso knows how to create a climax that sums what’s come before while surpassing it. “The Master Game” uses repetition as a weapon, pounding the ground in order to rise toward the sky. Momentum seems an inadeuqate word to describe it–the build achieved by all the gathering sonic threads is beyond tidal. As Iron Sharpens Iron, One Verse Sharpens Another may not be Donoso’s best album, but when “That Master Game” floods the stereo, it feels like his high watermark.
