CD – DenovaliRDTK is the alias of two good old friends, Ricardo Donoso and Thiago Kochenborger, who finally had the opportunity to work together for this album, produced by Denovali Records. Both natives of Brazil, long since moved on different roads, they had a common start at the beginning, when still teenagers they were both familiar with electronics production and basic home recording experiments. The current setting actually doesn’t seem so different from the old times, with the mix of traditional rock instrumentation and DAW. Obviously, time and experience make some difference from the past. The sound design is more rational, the production style is more complex and sophisticated, characterized by cinematic weaves and strong ambient development. The first two tracks show some elements typical of the late 80s electronic dark wave. In “Affective Forecasting” and “Shadows Arrive” the vocal by Kochenborger play a main part, the rhythm flows with a pulse given by the joy of overlapping emotional, intimate and reactive sequences to the pop substratum. Even more stylized, rarefied and anxious it’s “There Is Still Time”. The sound is typical of a poetic and estranging song, the dreamy loops and the electronics reminiscent of some last decades’ works by David Sylvian and the best Depeche Mode. Donoso said that during the work with Kochenborger the moving pulse was “the desire of the feeling they had on the very first days, when we didn’t know what we were doing and we were purely experimenting”. It’s clear the nostalgia is for a pure way of making music, based on mutual collaboration and on learning spirit. The excitement of making something different brought them far from their usual modalities, leading them close to some personal music borders, where are hard to recognize stylistically. Every musical plot in Human Resources is influenced by this shady and altered balance between passages that are at the same time delicate and restless, structures that are pop and high, influences that are slightly industrial and or dreamy tunes, experimental and close to post-rock. The music dictionary of Ricardo and Thiago is huge: this is definitely not a problem, but something to praise thanks to indubitable intensity and simplicity.

 

Denovali | RDTK (Ricardo Donoso & Thiago Kochenborger) – Human Resources