Fernando Perdomo 2025
Waves 11
Restless composer distills his creative method to essentials and accesses surface tension in most elemental ways.
The idea of creating a series of – mostly – marine-themed pieces and releasing them on a monthly basis to span an entire year, provided Fernando Perdomo with a vast playground where he could approach this creative concept from various angles, while largely avoiding the obvious aspects of it all. Still, the multi-instrumentalist’s snapping to well-mapped grid seemed inescapable, so the eleventh installment of his voyage finds Fern not only embracing surf-rock components of such a daring endeavor but also venturing into what can be considered – and what Perdomo simply had to delve into – library music. However, certain abstractness of some passages notwithstanding, there’s a lot of spellbinding moments the listener’s bound to enjoy.
Referencing the cycle’s title in two numbers – taking it to the fore for the first time since its initial volume – and masking warm smile under sonic snapshots of reflective expanses, Fernando’s melodies crystallize muscular twang to render each detail, up to the almost-vocal buzz, of “Cold Waves” mesmeric and make the vaguely familiar “Beneath The Waves” alluringly fragile in the absence of everything, apart from echoey guitar. Yet if “Coldwater Starship” reaches for generic fusion before turning up emotional heat in the loose weave of Perdomo’s solos, the bass-buoyed “Seagulls ATTACK!” paints, in bold strokes of strings yet without a single word, a riveting picture – destined to keep the audience involved and entertained when the artist’s fingers send bird-imitating flurries of notes across the stereo. And though the acoustically sculpted “Stilling” freezes the frame in a chamber-folk mode, “The Fall” locks into enchanting old-time balladry, and “Gringo Island” goes for the breezy Mexican jive.
On the other end of sentimental spectrum lies the stained-glass-translucent, and static, “Oceanchild” that sets the scene for the two-part “The Ocean And All It’s Glory” (sic!) which challenges its own epic scope through sheer wonder of Fernando’s heart-tugging, riff-ruffled delivery and a fractured “Greensleeves” for coda. Another Perdomo’s triumph, “Waves 11” is a different sea beast.
****
