As Catedrais Silenciadas

‘Illas de Sal’, the final track of As Catedrais Silenciadas, was built around one of the countless field recordings that the priceless work of Alan Lomax offered the world. Lomax was in Galicia in 1952, and the resulting volume that he dedicated to the music of that north-western region of Spain helped to connect the dots between the Celtic culture and the local traditional sounds. Listening closely to the work Xabier Díaz has been developing with the female singers and percussionists Adufeiras de Salitre after calling it quits with Berrogüetto, it is clear how much those elements are permanently at the centre of his music.

As someone who believes that traditional music will always be there while pop music comes and goes, Diaz brings these sounds into the present, but does not force a ‘contemporary’ approach. And that is why his work sounds so organic – he is not trying to give Galician music a modern make-over, he is just picking up on tradition and playing it today. The more rhythmically charged ‘Tentenublo’ easily sounds related to the work of Portuguese group Gaiteiros de Lisboa or Hedningarna from Sweden, but in the melancholic title-track there is enough Arabic and flamenco elements to follow down a different track. All the while, Diaz's sense of ease is hypnotic, as if Galicia had always sounded like this.