Costa Rica, musically, has always been a mystery to me. The last contact I had was with a brilliant DJ out of San José who hosted a progressive rock radio program, but to find out that there is experimental music coming out of the country is a very pleasant surprise.
Cyanosis is not a stranger to this site, as Efrain Valerio’s work was reviewed when he participated in a split album with our friends Destruktionsanstalt in April. This is the first chance I have had to hear his own work, and it is as bleak a recording as I have heard in a long time. This is what power electronics and noise should be. The sound is claustrophobic, something like being locked in a metal box inside a roaring volcano. This is literally the first image I had while listening to the album. It is that brutal, yet it manages to maintain some structure to it, and even has a feeling, in parts that it would have belonged to an Alfred Hitchcock movie had he still been alive during the 2020s.
Very impressive.
