The pandemic atmosphere is palpable, with the mask covering the mouth as a stumbling block and a new variant of the virus as a shadow in the air.

And in this being able/not being able to go out with peace of mind, Noiscapes, Franco Falistoco’s first work and the first reference of his nascent label, Bolinga Everest, appears as a double invitation: to travel without leaving home or, indeed, to go for a ride with his sonic company in tow.

It is striking, coming as it does from the other side of the Andes (Rosario-ARG, to be precise), that the first voices we hear are Chilean, apparently from street musicians devoted to that hard rock of the late 60s and early 70s that is still alive in the hearts and players of various streaming platforms and even open radio stations, such as our local Futuro (which, with that name, embodies a great paradox).

Listening to this series of soundscapes —or noisescapes, as Franco playfully calls them— can be done in a continuous or a piecemeal way without major inconveniences. If we opt for the former, we accompany him on a walk through Viña del Mar, moving from the sound generated by humans to the expression of the water and the beach. After a while, hard rock returns, refusing to die, like the composer Edgar Varese and, later, Frank Zappa.

Then we move from the sea to the park, with the music reappearing, this time acoustic and with a different frame, covered by voices, motors and birds, intertwining and maintaining the expressive sonorous pulse. After a while, we lose sight of details and sources: the motorised vehicles and ambient noise change into colours and timbres; the silhouettes and contours dissolve, becoming paintings or animations, if that’s how we want to conceive them. Or rhythms, if we prefer this experimental perspective or disposition.

Such synaesthesia can provoke our sensorium in a very similar way to some of ASMR’s videos, which are presented in an increasingly better audiovisual and thematically more formulaic way. Now we leave the park to return to the water, with a different rhythm and environment: there is also music, human voices and birds that make themselves heard without much inconvenience, which makes me think of the effort that the latter have had to make to distinguish themselves in the city.

Thus, the 30 minutes of NOISCAPES fly by. Just like the extension he proposed to me for this review. “With 30 lines I am the happiest man in the world,” was the invitation. I hope I have followed his example. And may brevity be an impulse to return to the source, to be happy, again and again.

Gerardo Figueroa Rodríguez.
Maipú, Santiago de Chile, end 2021, beginning 2022.