b. Fernando Corona, 1970, Tijuana, Mexico. Murcof merges contemporary ‘holy minimalist’ orchestration and melancholic techno to create a near devotional music that has been compared to imaginary collaborations between Arvo Pärt and Thomas Brinkmann or Giya Kancheli and the Aphex Twin. Corona is involved with the rising Nortec movement, founded by artists (including Panoptica, Ruisort and Loopdrop) whose electronica incorporates popular traditional Mexican music. He is reported to be a near household name in his homeland, for the Nortec music he records under the Terrestre alter ego, and is also involved in film shorts, video games and contemporary dance performances.

In 2002, Murcof released his first EP of twitchy digital clicks and reconfigured late twentieth-century compositions via Context Free Media, the label run by San Francisco tech-minimalist Sutekh. His long-playing debut Martes (Spanish for Tuesday, the day of the week that Corona started recording the album) was initially released on Mexican micro-indie Static Discos before being picked up by UK electronica label Leaf. The mysterious, atmospheric music on the album perfectly reflected the parched, near lunar landscapes of the Rumorasa mountain range pictured on the sleeve. To create Martes, Corona utilized software downloaded from the Internet to process the sounds of his contemporary classical CD collection, juxtaposing the by-product of this experimentation with arid micro-rhythms. Corona’s stated basis for the acclaimed album was to retain the mood and intention of the original classical recordings whilst transforming the samples into something entirely new. Corona notably claims Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki as explicit influences on Murcof. ~ Rovi

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