Ricardo Gomez Y De Buck

Ricardo Gomez Y De Buck is a noise/industrial/ambient musician, probably most known for his work in Kraken, a Belgium-based duo of him and Joris Vermost. Ricardo has also recently released a solo record under the guise of RGYDB vs Kids, titled Noisebevel – sound sculptures accompanying a projection made by children from an art school in Bevel/Kessel. The duo of Kraken has been around since the late 80s with a number of great releases, most of which came out in this millennium on Spectre and more recently Raubbau. Both Ricardo and his co-conspirator are visual artists as well as musicians, and, accordingly, Kraken’s output has a strong visual element to supplement the music. Much like the mythical creature, little is known about Kraken – they seem to just appear occasionally out of the great abyss and drop an album for humanity to ponder over. The sounds on these records are like the echoes of those same oceanic depths encoded in the project title, or like echoes of the sea of subconsciousness in which we all sink or swim. Field recordings of remote conversations, layers of faint, barely recognizable sounds, oppressive atmospheres that creep up on you through the vast emptiness – all of this and much more can be found in the works of the great Kraken. When asked to categorize their music, Joris Vermost once said it could simply be described as “flow of thought”, and it does seem eerily accurate to think of it as just that.

In the records

STM 220 was created by Ricardo Gomez over a span of two years. That may seem like a long time, but what we have here is a 4-hour, 122-track leviathan of a mix with so many layers that it’s difficult to figure out where tracks surface and wither away. Much like the oeuvre of Kraken, a fitting metaphor for Ricardo’s mix is that of a ship lost in the ocean of the mind, crossing streams and pockets lost to the world of the waking. The massive collection merges tracks that have left an impact on the author at different points in his life – mostly industrial, noise, contemporary classical music, spoken word – by well known experimental artists, as well as underexposed ones; tracks from computer game soundtracks (how many have been scared shitless playing System Shock 2?), film scores, monologues. At almost any point throughout the duration there are 3-7 different layers intermingled for a confusing, yet completely coherent whole. By no means is this an easy background listen, rather, it is a long, challenging, and extremely rewarding journey beyond the Mountains of Madness, to see the Great God Pan. If it were necessary to describe it in a painting, then perhaps it would be Rene Magritte’s The Lining Of Sleep. The depth of its horizon, the vague familiarity of its shapes, and the surrounding mystery are similar to the feel captured in Ricardo Gomez’ mix. Leave your day behind and lie down.