Rafael Toral Is Murdering the Classics

Rafael Toral’s most recent album, 2024’s Spectral Evolution, consisted of a single 42-minute track, divided into loose, flowing movements, but based on the chord changes of the Gershwin chestnut “I Got Rhythm.” On his follow-up, Traveling Light (October 24), the Portuguese guitarist works smaller, refashioning six jazz standards using his “space instruments”— electronic contraptions of his own invention that modulate feedback, distort signals, and utilize other instruments like the theremin to create eerie tones, transforming them into something decidedly nontraditional. 

As on Spectral Evolution, Toral radically decreases tempos, letting chords elongate into languorous drones that sound more like electric organ than guitar. It’s a simple yet effective trick that’s been used by countless bands—if you slow things down enough, even the simplest melody and most basic rhythm turn strange, complex, and compelling. Yet Toral has got more on his mind than a good gimmick; the way he elaborates and expands upon the hypnotic structures of these decelerated oldies never fails to surprise or intrigue. 

Toral picked his tunes shrewdly, with an ear for the esoteric but never descending into pure obscurity. Three are associated with Billie Holiday: “Easy Living,” “Body and Soul” and “God Bless the Child” (the latter co-written by her), two with Miles Davis: “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and “My Funny Valentine.” One, “(In My) Solitude,” is a Duke Ellington number. Except for “Valentine” and “Child,” most are probably not well-known outside of the jazz community, but all have been performed by legendary artists and left a mark in the popular subconscious. Written in the 1930s and ’40s, these songs share a sort of bone-deep Depression-era desolation, a mix of sultry ache, bluesy insouciance, and modernist lassitude, the sort of wee-hour existentialism that disappeared after the boom times began and America went suburban. 

It’s a vibe that’s usually cloaked in nostalgia, but in Toral’s hands, it grows feral. Stretched out like molasses, the streetwise dream of “Easy Living” becomes surreal and disorienting, especially with the high-pitched, froglike chirp that kicks it off and which recurs throughout. Ellington’s “Solitude,” a gently dissonant reverie, retains a wistful sophistication even as its elegant harmonic sensibility dissolves into a welter of drones, accordionlike pulses, and synthetic, birdlike calls. With Traveling Light, Toral isn’t so much evoking or exploring the past as he is reimagining it, turning it into something not exactly new, but different; not exactly alien, but disarmingly unfamiliar. 

Besides stretching these songs, Toral also stretches himself. He summons some remarkable tones from his instruments, from the glassy, echo-laden strum of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” to the blistered warps that open “God Bless the Child.” He also finds more room to play guitar that sounds like guitar, giving “My Funny Valentine” a tactile weight that feels weirdly organic among the shimmering ribbons of drone and electronic warbles. Most impressively, he occasionally lets in additional musicians, with a line from a clarinet, tenor sax, flugelhorn, or flute suddenly manifesting among Toral’s manufactured labyrinths. It’s a testament to the uncanny magic of Traveling Light that, for a few seconds, these unadorned analog instruments from jazz’s heyday sound just as unreal as the processed guitar and altered electronics, while the muted microchip roar of Toral’s technology feels like the oldest love song, whispered in the bittersweet dark, full of indomitable heartbreak and irrepressible human longing.