SATORI,
THE
MYSTICISM OF ROCK
By: J.M.
The guitarist and member of the Spanish rock band No Lo Sé!, Miguel Alberto
Cruz, works after the artistic name of Satori.
His aspect as Satori constitutes his solo career
within a risky, avantgarde musical environment. Coming from
symphonic rock, he seeks the most mystic, psychedelic depths in it,
reaching far into unreal soundscapes and magic melodies, between
the ghostly and the heavenly.
Satori does not hide the influence that the mythical band Pink Floyd had in him when it came to getting interested in music and composition. Being a teenager, he was on holidays at a mountain spot. One morning he woke up. It was a sunny day but outside it was full of snow. His attention was attracted by a music that sounded magical, heavenly. It came from outside. It was heard from some loudspeakers distributed all over the mountain. "Fed up with running about all over the mountain asking the people what this was, I finally got someone to answer me: A composition by Pink Floyd; It was the Shine on your crazy diamond theme from the album Wish you were here. And I had woken up hearing that. This was the first time I felt touched by an electronic composition, and when my interest in music at large was born."
Therefore, it was during his teenage days that he
discovered his musical vocation and it was then that he began to
learn to play the guitar, first the classical guitar and then the electric guitar.
At age sixteen he also began to compose. His first compositions
were initiated within what was later to become the band No
Lo Sé!. He began professionally in music as a sound
technician of the rock band Números Rojos. In
the meantime, he supplied his personal studio with different
units of guitar effects devices, that in those times happened to
be incredibly expensive, which meant for him a great effort.
Later on, he worked as a guitarist in the band Els Pets,
and as a sound technician in the first demo of the band. He
participated in several live concerts with them, and learned good
things: "The truth is, this is
a band that taught me to live the music as a party, playing
before an audience to have a good time, without constantly
worrying about doing everything perfectly well, even though I am
a perfectionist deep inside".
Already within the band No Lo Sé!, he made records and performances, while preparing to shape in a definite way his most personal musical ideas. In 1991, his first solo album, called Satori, was released by the record label Hyades Arts. At that time he already proved his extraordinary imagination as a guitarist, by creating a collection of impressive pieces, often with cosmic sounds typical of a synthesizer orchestra, and all that exclusively using the electric guitar and units of effects.
His next album, Tick, also released by Hyades Arts, revealed a new aspect of his, with themes of different styles although all of them shared a common aestheticism, and all of them were committed to offering new experiences to the listener. This CD also constitutes a spectacular display of sonic possibilities little known of an electric guitar. Although Satori has been compared to Robert Fripp, his style goes to rather unexplored terrains, and responds to his personal interests.
Having been well received by the critics specialized in innovative music, Satori led events that had an important difusion in the early 1990s. From an international perspective, the most decisive moment was his performance in the United States. Other circumstances, such as the great audience his music has had on the Russian State Radio, with a coverage ranging all over the CIS, were good indicators of the interest towards his task on the part of an audience eager for new sensations.
Combining his solo career with his work in No Lo Sé!, he was instrumental in having this band harvest a remarkable success in the multimedia arena with the creation of a macroperformance celebrated in the open air in the city of Tarragona, inspired on the legends of ancient history, the origin of the universe, and other transcendental questions. This event included not only music, but also projections of images, light effects, and the utilization of ancient monuments and futuristic installations as elements of the virtual stage. The music, of a style classifiable within symphonic rock, also displayed an important orientation towards the cosmic, the mystic. The result of this experience appears compiled in the CD Kesse, and it also will shortly be released as a video which combines images from the live concert with computer animations and other visual material.
The
instrument Satori feels emotionally more
identified with is the guitar. "When
I take something having six cords, I feel at once an
interrelationship between this instrument and my soul." He
is very critical with those who, from the most conservative sector
of music, believe that such modern instruments as the electric
guitar or the synthesizer lack the expressive quality of the
classical orchestral instruments. "I
believe they think this way because they have never played these
instruments. To those who claim, for instance, that the
synthesizer offers less possibilities than a piano, I would tell
them simply to try it and to get rid of that nonsense, and of
scholarly narrow-mindedness, that music is a field open to
imagination, and that it cannot be cut like this".
As for how he would define himself in the musical arena, he has a clear notion that he is not committed to any standard style. "In my solo music, I am not limited to any given trend in any way. I do not seek to label my music within a style. It's just music. Labels exist to try to have things clear at a level of pure marketing, from a commercial, business point of view".
Satori thinks that success in music consists in recording what one wishes to record, not in getting a wide commercial hit. "For me, the ideal way to function is to work, to create and to seek a new research field, a new sound, a new light within music. It doesn't matter what kind of music you do if you enjoy yourself doing it."
