Fernando Perdomo 2025
Waves 10
Restless composer takes to water to observe, and serve up, reflections of his very soul.
Variety of purely instrumental expression has always been one of Fernando Perdomo‘s stronger suits, so to see this artist stuck on a single spot of emotional spectrum, deliberately so, may seem strange, yet he’s miraculously managed to make the tenth installment of “Waves” as arresting as the series’ previous chapters. One can even suspect Perdomo conspired with Rick Wakeman to provide a perfect guitar counterpart to the pianist’s “Melancholia” which was released two weeks after Fern’s platter, but Perdomo hardly thought of the British veteran when he decided to concentrate on a cluster of elegiac moods magnificently unfolding in front of the listener. Focused on the same aspect of human feelings, the ten fresh cuts are too finely detailed to not feel different – and not only on melodical level.
From the first fluid notes of “Poseidon” – whose gentle twang, shot through with folk filigree, should evoke suspended animation before landing on a dramatic coda – to the velvet-gloomy, resonant sway of “The Caress” which forms this album’s nocturnally intimate finale, there’s hardly a moment that’s not breathtaking in its fleeting beauty. While the wide-stroke passages of “Golden Glow” suggest vast, and dangerous, spaces of open sea at sunset, and the psychedelic vibes of “Sun Be Gone” reach for sparser, bluesier, echo-filled guitar harmonies, “Keeping The Stone Warm” offers a more sensual sort of light via the delicate weave of Fernando’s six strings. Still, if “Ms. Diver” ripples over a magnetically minimalistic backdrop of a symphonic stripe, “Abandoned Mansion In Decay” finds Perdomo performing wonders through muscular, yet nuanced, acoustic strum until the robust “Bustelo For Blood” breaks the mold by gaining momentum and adding pop-polish and a hint of synthetic vocalese to the record’s flow.
And then there are the silvery “Koi” that creates a majestic multilayered structure out of barely-there slivers of tune which dance around the audience’s ears, and “Illusion Delusion” that harnesses silence and sound to sculpt a spellbinding stereo panorama which is becoming increasingly corporeal with each second. They amplify this genuine, undiluted magic in motion – and work towards rendering “Waves 10” another proof of Fernando Perdomo’s boundless fantasy.
*****
