La Otra Mitad

Nothing startles these days. Postmodernism has attuned us to collage, palimpsest and pastiche. But this sampling of sonic essays on Spanish guitar by Raül Refree occasionally veers close to surprising. Just when you think you're in for a longish half-hour of acoustic picking and twanging, he splices in a new element: ambient chill-out music (played backwards), thickly accented Spanish chatter, an a capella cante jondo wail.

A respected producer, Refree has worked with artists as different as Silvia Pérez Cruz and Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo and is an expert at pushing buttons and sliders to polish other artists' work. On La Otra Mitad – ‘The Other Half’ of his vocation, perhaps – he turns inward to go in search of an introspective, personal signature. What he comes up with is a pleasantly filmic flamenco – part of the album forms part of a soundtrack commission – and if you like the idea of meditativeness à la Mark Knopfler relocated to Malaga, you'll enjoy this.