Fernando Perdomo 2025
Waves 4
A full-on swell of sonic mass of water brings esteemed tune-master closer to the crest of his year-long arc.
Fernando Perdomo‘s periodic checking into various ports of call couldn’t signal the plain-sailing curve of his seafaring so far, yet the American musician has been increasing the emotional amplitude of “Waves” slowly, if surely, enough for the series’ fourth installment to sound like a quantum dive into the tide of tone. With its cover suggesting a stormier weather, this album’s tracks and even some of their titles – of the solemnly blistering “Soaked” or of the baroque-tinctured, enchantingly heavy opener “Pulled In” as well as of the reflectingly twangy blues “Find Me” – go deeper under the listener’s skin than previous chapters of Perdomo’s endeavor. Now Fern plumbs the depths of one’s psyche not only by playing all the instruments, again, but also by intensifying emotional squall of his arrangements.
Not that there is a proper concept to the record’s stream of consciousness, yet with the multilayered, albeit brief, prog suite “The Most Beautiful Giant (tallgirlkatie)” ostensibly linked to the finely filigreed “The Most Mysterious Man” which exudes Mediterranean bliss, and with breezily heartfelt passages of “The Tunnel” prefacing the acoustic fantasy of “The Thunder, The Rain, The Mist” where the different elements of Perdomo’s performance blend together to a great effect, it’s difficult not to see this platter as a whole experience. So when the vibrant vapors of piano-bolstered “Brighton” and “Beauty” arrive on the scene to mesmerize the audience without offering any folk-infected trance as a sort of adventure, descending into the dark of Fernando’s trenches should feel like a privilege, and when his soft riffs on “The West Bay (for David and Patricia)” turn such sinking inti pleasure, the results are genuinely majestic.
One third into his trip, Fernando Perdomo is well on the way to magnificence.
*****
