interview with Rafael Toral

Written by James Hadfield

As Rafael Toral’s Bandcamp profile puts it, he’s spent his career “bouncing between the music within sounds and the sounds beyond music.” The Portuguese musician has been a vital presence in the world of experimental music for over three decades, but he’s currently enjoying a renaissance on the back of last year’s “Spectral Evolution.” A landmark work, the album unites different strands of Toral’s endlessly inquisitive practice: the liquefied guitar tones heard on early releases like “Wave Field” (1995); the menagerie of unruly DIY electronic instruments he assembled during his “Space Program” period, which ran from 2004-2017. The key ingredient is classic jazz harmony, including the instantly recognisable (if glacially slow) chord progressions of “I Got Rhythm” and “Take the ‘A’ Train,” which give the album a surprising emotional heft.
“Spectral Evolution” was the result of a painstaking three-year process, during which Toral produced 56 versions of the piece. When he turned to his friend Jim O’Rourke for advice, the latter was so taken by what he heard, he revived his long-dormant Moikai label in order to release it.
In an email exchange with Toral ahead of his first tour of Japan since 2008 – where he’ll be sharing a bill with O’Rourke and Eiko Ishibashi – the musician discussed his relationship with jazz, the importance of beauty in an increasingly ugly world, and the “feedback of love” he’s experienced while performing “Spectral Evolution” live. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Speaking about “Spectral Evolution” in an interview with Tone Glow last year, you said you “had to learn and study and develop a lot in order to make this record.” Can you expand on this?

Well, the album has lots of jazz chords and to connect these chords together you need to know what you’re doing. I had to understand why and how a single note out of place steers a chord into a different colour. I wasn’t prepared for that, so a lot of work went into having it done correctly, then convincingly, then beautifully. As I was struggling with that, I asked Jim for advice, and that’s how he decided to release it.

Can you tell me about your relationship with Jim? Do you often share your works-in-progress with him, or was this a special case?

Jim and I have been great friends since 1995 or so; we first met in Chicago. He’s always been way too busy, so it doesn’t occur to me to distract him with stuff. But this case was different: I was struggling with the harmonies and arrangements, because the album was beyond my capacities and I knew I didn’t have a choice but to climb up to that bar. I knew Jim has much more knowledge in many fields of music than myself, so I asked him to listen, as a friend.

Reaching beyond your capacities seems to be a regular thing in your work. Where do you find the motivation to keep pushing yourself like this?

Well, I just try to make sense of what I am supposed to do: Where should my energy go, and where is the nexus of what I want to do; what is a positive move in its time, what is being said, and whether it should bear my name. Very often, it turns out to be something I must build from the ground up and it entails a promise, a vision. I don’t really have a choice but to fulfil it, even if that means I’ll be pushing myself. Besides, I guess it’s easy to forget we’re not done with evolution: I think we actually have the obligation to evolve.

What role does beauty have in your work?

[Thinking] Well, maybe not a role, but… on the one hand, I’ve grown up immersed in 20th century culture, which, broadly speaking, was mostly busy with dismantling/deconstructing/destroying structures, from cubism to punk, from serialism to glitch. When I was young, anything that was “beautiful” was not to be considered seriously as legitimate art. This is a very gross generalisation, of course. But I felt I needed to claim freedom from that and embrace beauty as something integral to today’s art. We could discuss this forever – I can’t really put it in a nutshell. On the other hand, beauty is not simply cultural/aesthetic; it goes beyond one’s likes and dislikes. There’s a lot of overlap between preferences and our biological and neurological response to what we see and hear. Like, a perfect fifth sounds great and is beautiful, but it’s an interval from a simple mathematical proportion, 3/2, and is a natural vibrating phenomena that has the cells in your body resonating, and who knows what else is happening, when a sound gives you chills down the spine because it’s so good – beauty does go that deep. And lastly, the world is getting so ugly that we better hold on to what is beautiful – in a broad sense, not just pretty, but anything that contains elevated qualities, like integrity, etc.

Pythagoras was right! Have you delved much into the science of this?

I haven’t gotten into the science much. Science is a pillar of civilisation but also lacks everything it can’t measure and explain. I also try to keep away from “knowing” that sort of thing with my head. I try to validate my movements with intuition, often from a kind of knowledge that pertains more to the body and not so much to the brain. And besides, I always prefer to leave that open, for the listener to have their own way to integrate the music.

I think the elevated qualities you’re talking about are also often what separates great art from the mediocre. Was there any particular impetus that made you reconsider your thoughts about beauty?

Definitely today’s exponential increase of ugliness, the decline of civilisation… holding on to beauty is strangely becoming a survival strategy, a conscious effort towards sanity. And yes, beauty understood broadly. Like, acknowledging facts is beautiful, as opposed to spreading lies. Or the beauty of bringing opposite worlds together and having them talk to each other: That’s what “Spectral Evolution” is all about.

Given how much work was involved in producing the final version of “Spectral Evolution” heard on the album, what’s it been like performing it live?

The concert benefits from the album’s structure, which makes it very solid, and the way it sounds live is like being physically immersed in a sound field. It connects the emotional aspects of harmony with the physical experience of vibration. It seems to be intense for the audience; sometimes people tell me they almost cried. For me, it’s important to draw listeners into the sound and that creates a feedback of love.

“Feedback of love” is a great image – I think it says a lot about the relationship you have with your audience.

In some concerts, it can be felt very clearly. These sounds and this whole album have been made with love and it’s been met with a loving way of listening by the audience, and that engagement, that quality of feeling, beams back to the stage.

How has your relationship with your audience developed over your career?

I’ve always respected the audience very much and I’m grateful for how I’m able to contribute something they use in their lives. When you give something and it’s well received, that receiving is in turn a gift back to you. I always commit myself to deliver something that justifies their getting out of their homes and buying a ticket and spending their time listening to whatever I play.

Are the intense emotional reactions you’ve encountered when performing “Spectral Evolution” something new, or have you elicited similar responses with other projects in the past?

This is new, as it’s much more emotional than anything I’ve done before, and it’s delivered with intensity.

I think there are artists who'd view "emotional" music with the same suspicion you talked about earlier, in relation to beauty. As you said, this is new territory for you, but how did you arrive here?

Dealing with clearer emotions is new to me and is unintentional. I like to keep emotions open and abstract so that the listener can project their own. These harmonies have emotions built-in and it’s almost impossible to escape them. I’m more interested in their sound, however.

How much does “Spectral Evolution” vary from one performance to the next?

The live version is expanded; some transitions take a more relaxed time. The album was not originally conceived to be played live, so I play as many live guitar parts as possible, and a few of those are improvised. But it’s very consistent: The variation is in the details. The room acoustics and the PA configuration have a decisive effect, and that’s why I spend hours of soundcheck making it sound good every time.

What does your soundcheck involve? Have you found any ways to streamline the process, or is it always a challenge?

Both! I mean, sometimes a fine PA in a good venue makes things easier, but it’s usually a challenge. I do have a sequenced method and the goal is to create a surround body of sound that is intense but invites people in. A sound that doesn’t push you, but pulls you instead. A sound that isn’t there to dominate, but to embrace you. Every room is different, so the tuning has to be very precise.

I was listening to the mix you did for The Wire at the end of last year, and it’s a fascinating complement to the album – Kenny Burrell isn't normally my thing, but he makes perfect sense in this context. Out of interest, what’s your relationship like with the jazz tradition?

It’s always been like a satellite in orbit. Totally focused in but standing elsewhere. Once I said about the Space Program (my previous free-jazz inspired project of electronics), “It’s all jazz, except the music.” For entirely different reasons, the same applies to “Spectral Evolution.” I have a lot of admiration for the heightened humanity of jazz. There’s a lot to learn and a lot to feel. Layers of depth for the mind and heart.

Do you think your appreciation of jazz, and the qualities you mentioned, has deepened as you get older?

Oh yes, indeed! When I was 15, jazz just didn’t make sense to me and I didn’t have any interest in it. Sometimes, I’d come across something that I could acknowledge was good but I didn’t have the references or experience to process it, eventually becoming able to appreciate it only 5 or 10 years later. The meanings and values change with respect to how you integrate them. For example, when I first heard Kenny Burrell, I thought he wasn’t the most exciting jazz guitarist (there goes the typical 20th-century thinking). But when I started playing, now I’ve come to respect him a lot more.

Do you have jazz chops as a guitarist?

Gosh, no! I do try to learn and absorb everything I can, but it’s definitely not towards becoming a jazz guitarist. I’m interested in the sound of the guitar as it’s played, more than the actual “music”.

Did you completely step away from the guitar during your Space Program period?

I didn’t touch a guitar for 15 years. As I’ve embraced a much more demanding guitar culture, I feel like starting from scratch. There’s so much to learn and practice, because the stakes are so much higher, so it’s almost like I’m 8 years old or so. To make it more difficult, I find myself uninterested in most guitar idioms, but I still want to play – so I’m figuring out what…

You recently released an extract of a new piece called “Layers.” What can you tell me about it?

“Layers” is an accumulation of sustained notes, gradually replacing themselves, played with varying degrees of tonal intention. Then it goes through some gear that brings out incredibly complex and shifting harmonics. It’s a new piece to be played fully live. “Layers” is just one specific thing, more simple and completely oriented to performance as a creative process, as opposed to “Spectral Evolution” which is a broad field of connections in composition. “Layers” is already part of the future and doing what I love: engaging with the unknown.

ジェイムズ・ハッドフィールド Written by James Hadfield（2025年6月20日）

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