Rafael Toral
Rafael Toral, born in Lisbon in 1967, is a Portuguese musician and sound engineer who has performed since 1984. Self-taught and focused on exploration rather than formal study, he first became known for dense, beautiful ambient records made with electric guitar and feedback, among them Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, close in spirit to Brian Eno and My Bloody Valentine. In 2004 he broke with that language and began the Space Program, playing unstable, gestural electronic instruments of his own design with the phrasing of a jazz musician, silence and risk built into every gesture.
Showtime
First vinyl edition of Showtime, Sei Miguel's 1996 album and his first proper studio record, recorded live in Lisbon in 1994 with Rafael Toral on guitar, now presented as one piece with the cover photo originally planned.
Traveling Light
From out of the dark, the crackle of feed back birdsong signals a return to the land of sound environments exclusive to the music of Rafael Toral. A year and a half after his epochal electric guitar album, Spectral Evolution, Traveling Light finds hi…
Sound Mind Sound Body
Sound Mind Sound Body was inspired in part by the working principles of Fripp & Eno, extrapolated by Rafael Toral via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tone…
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Wave Field
Digital album is the 2025 Edition, available on CD. Wave Field, released in 1995, was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O'R…
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Space Elements Vol. III
According to Rafael Toral, the Space Program is all about a simple idea: to perform abstract electronic music under jazz values. The result is full of fascinating paradoxes: "melodic without notes, rhythmic without a beat, familiar but strange, metic…
Space Elements Vol. II
Space Elements Vol. II is the fourth release in Rafael Toral's ongoing project, the Space Program. Following the first Elements release, this volume features a new set of collaborators: Evan Parker (soprano sax), Manuel Mota (guitar), Afonso Simões (…
Space Elements Vol. I
This is the third in Rafael Toral's Space Program series of releases -- his long-term research project launched in 2004, through which he has unearthed an innovative approach and a complete re-thinking of how electronic music is conceived and experie…
Space Solo I
Originally released on CD by Staubgold side-label Quecksilber in 2007, Space Solo 1 is Rafael Toral's second release in his ongoing Space Program, a venturesomely bold series of recordings. Internationally-acclaimed for his experimental drone and amb…
On Air
No Noise Reduction, a collaboration project between Rafael Toral and João Paulo Feliciano, operated throughout the 1990's and early 2000's. In the Summer of 1995, João Paulo Feliciano and myself did a more focused effort on extended improvisation pie…
Cire Noire
A compilation of contemporary electronic sounds by parallel thinking agents from Europe and US.
Sounding Spaces (9 Sound Installations)
English / Japanese Book (Hardcover, 80 pages) with interviews and explanations about the works presented during the exhibition of the same name held @ ICC Tokyo, july 11 - september 29, 2003.
Spectral Evolution
After a two-decade interlude, Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like "Sound Mind Sound Body" and "Wave Field" (both reissue…
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Sirocco: A Compendium Of Experimental Music Made In Portugal Vol.2
As famous as the Northern Wind or Mistral, Sirocco is a Mediterranean wind that blows from the Sahara Desert, and is widely responsible for huge and cinematic sand storms, and also for a strange phenomenon called “blood rain”, due to the red sand tha…
Jupiter and Beyond
Jupiter, the gas giant in our Solar System, with thunderstorms a thousand times more powerful than on Earth, rainfalls of diamonds in the atmosphere, temperatures below -100°C, plenty of hydrogen, 79 moons and a South pole that looks like an abstract…
Aeriola Frequency
Black Truffle announce the first vinyl reissue of Rafael Toral's Aeriola Frequency, originally released by Perdition Plastics in 1998. Toral made his name in the world of mid-90s experimental electronics with two releases, Sound Mind Sound Body (1994…
Moon Field
On Moon Field, Rafael Toral breaks new ground, it is his first edition that moves outward, beyond the Space Program series. This collection of three extended and interlocking works, mark the beginning of a transitional period into a new phase. Buildi…
Space Collective 2 Live
Space Collective 2 Live commemorates Portuguese musician Rafael Toral’s first U.S. tour in several years. Since the 1990s, Toral has been primarily known for his guitar work, but has since been working on the Space Program project, within which he ha…
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Violence of discovery and calm of acceptance
Considered by the Chicago Reader to be "one of the most gifted and innovative guitarists of the decade", Rafael Toral has been developing in the last 15 years a unique sound world, having been as influenced by Alvin Lucier and Brian Eno as by Sonic Y…
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Space
After over 15 years of drone and ambient work based around guitar and electronics, Rafael Toral has set off on a radically new mission. Leaving the guitar behind, Toral has equipped himself with instruments such as a theremin-controlled white noise g…
Sound Mind Sound Body
Rafael Toral's music is guitar based, but doesn't seem to involve any of the usual guitar histrionics. Instead he focuses in on the little details, the expansion of the sustained note. Sound Mind Sound Body is indeed a sustained note; the music is no…
Harmonic series 2
Japanese-only release. Recorded live in Japan in 2003, Harmonic Series 2 is a 43 minute piece for computer generated sinewaves, custom software, guitar and analog electronics. It follows Harmonic Series 0 which was released on Table of the Elements. …