Iluso Records

Álvaro Domene

The centerpiece is the nearly 31-minute "The Apogee of Domestication." It's pure Domene in that it functions on multiple levels, able to occupy the background while also enveloping you with its details — part Steve Roachian hum, part Autechrean rolls of the rhythmic dice. It's dynamic, too, at times building up to squalls like growing hurricanes, and at others flying through the eyewalls to reach the eerie interior. Needless to say, it's bracing in its inventiveness, the kind of music that elicits an "Oh, this is what music can do!" from the newly adventurous. And that's just it: You can say things about Álvaro Domene's compositions, and read them, too, but the listening is the surprise, one that will evolve any listener's perception of music's potential, no matter their fluency. That's why we're here, weary travelers. DARVO MACHINÆ II is new, and when you come out the other side, you're new, too. – Ian Chainey [AKA Wolf Rambatz linktr.ee/wrambatz ] credits ● Álvaro Domene: compositions, seven string electric guitar, live electronics, and drum synthesizer-sampler. ● Audio engineered by Domene. ● Liner Notes by Ian Chainey [AKA Wolf Rambatz linktr.ee/wrambatz ]. ● Cover photo by Domene at Cova de les Calaveres, Alacant. ● Published by Dometone Music BMI alvarodomene.com In memory of Klee Benally, Béla Tarr, and Benito Flores.

Álvaro Domene

Álvaro Domene's work is music's future rendered in the present. The first installment of DARVO Machinæ, the New York-by-way-of-Madrid composer's newest work of guitar innovation, is all the artist's paths converging into one album. In a way, it's like a lifelong explorer unveiling the full map of their travels, showing how yesterday's experiences can guide tomorrow's. What immediately stands out about DARVO Machinæ is not its aural adventurousness, but how Domene eases the listener into its unique language. "Spectral Cartographies," with its skittering IDM beats and fuzzy click & cuts atmospherics, is the album's Rosetta Stone, building fluency slowly. By the time Domene starts soloing with the fluidity of a musical notation of Brownian motion, and the beats take off with breakcore intensity, you already have the whole picture. This understanding makes the music even more bracing, in the same way that background know-how enlivens sporting events, or an expanded vocabulary enriches conversations. DARVO Machinæ is a music empath in that way, because it can soak up whatever is on your mind. Like all music worth its salt, Darvo Machinæ is you. It makes the case that your journey is as important as its own. And what a journey. When "Coded Rituals of the Margins" comes around, DARVO Machinæ's 10-minute behemoth, you've already graduated from a crash course of Domene's quantum guitaring. You're no longer experiencing the music from the outside; you're now an inhabitant of the world DARVO Machinæ has terraformed. But, of course, you are not alone. Domene is right there beside you. That's the quality that sets these songs apart from other avant-garde efforts. They are not avant-hard; they're so very human. Although Domene works at the edges of what music can be, his output aims for where your heart resides. That’s the present, in all senses. — Ian Chainey

Scott Amendola & Álvaro Domene

Guitarist Álvaro Domene and drummer Scott Amendola first crossed paths in Berkeley, California, in 2019, introduced by guitarist Henry Kaiser for an evening of solo performances culminating in a trio improvisation. The chemistry was immediate. What might have become a series of performances and a studio recording was instead interrupted by a world that suddenly fell silent. Yet rather than disappearing, the collaboration evolved. Separated by geography but united in creative ambition, Domene and Amendola began exchanging recordings remotely, building the music through a sustained process of composition, improvisation and reinterpretation. The ensuing conversation is remarkable for the absence of hierarchy. Throughout the record, Domene's singular guitar language—equally indebted to contemporary composition, free improvisation and metal—finds an ideal counterpart in Amendola, whose drumming is less concerned with marking time than with constantly reshaping it. Electronics emerge not as ornament but as a further extension of the dialogue, expanding the sonic landscape without obscuring its essential humanity. This is music that rewards repeated listening. With each return, new relationships reveal themselves—between melody and noise, structure and freedom, density and space. There are moments of beauty, menace, humour and sheer weight, sometimes within the same piece. Nothing remains settled for long. Like the musical relationship from which it emerged, All Day Sun Aura leaves the sense of a conversation still unfolding. — Michael Caratti

Álvaro Pérez & Álvaro Domene

8 track album "Forever pushing the envelope, saxophonist Álvaro Pérez and, taking a breather from the normal guitar duties, drum synthist Álvaro Domene seal a style fusion within that envelope that even Carnac the Magnificent couldn’t read: glitched-out breakbeat crashing into jazz, as if V-Snares circa Doll Doll Doll had a tête-à-tête with Anthony Braxton." Ian Chainey's ( AKA Wolf Rambatz) blog "Some of the best songs of 2026, so far". QUANTUM DISSENT is the debut album from a powerful and new collaborative project by Álvaro Pérez and Álvaro Domene. Across eight tracks, the duo unleashes a high-octane barrage of hyper-speed, hocket-driven cyber-techno-jazz-glitch-core inspired by the current surveillance ecocidal tech-feudalist times, thematically moving from sociopolitical rupture, through de(con)struction and crisis before ultimately arriving at well-needed re-construction. Pérez is here at the top of his already inspiring game, displaying breathtaking flow, refinement and sustained energy on tenor, alto, and soprano saxophones, while Domene [featured exclusively on drum synthesizer-sampler for the first time], propels and anchors the apparent chaos deploying glitch nets and carefully timed explosions through which Pérez flies at neck breaking speeds.

ADAPAR

"ADAPAR, the duo of multi-instrumentalist Álvaro Domene and saxophonist Álvaro Pérez, feels so far ahead of the rest of modern music, like a peek through a tear in the space-time continuum, a demented dimension where Autechre, John Zorn, and Fredrik Thordendal are united by breakcore. Weasel Walter, no stranger to using the fringe of music as a bungee rope, called it a "disorienting duet of fractured fax-machine glitch-babble," and, really, who am I to argue with Weasel Walter? Longtime readers know I'm a Domene disciple, so you cannot quarrel with me when I call 3: Öpik Transmission that good, good stuff. Like past works, it's a lot, often all at the same time; thus, begone, normal people. You bet, this thing will shed your tin-eared, fairweather friends faster than a shaggy husky brushing past your black pants. Some folks aren't ready for the future. That said, there's something so now about what ADAPAR has achieved. Check out "The Value Of Vision." Squiggly information eternally pours out of a spigot that can't be turned off, and then, beneath the noise, big, foreboding guitar chugs rumble like thunder on the horizon. When was the last time you felt something like that? Probably today, probably while reading the news." - Ian Chainey (AKA Wolf Rambatz)

Álvaro Domene & User Friendly

WATCH THE VIDEO FOR "PROTOSTELLAR CORE | E4XUDC" on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/24wfw4pf In EXU3DC, Baltimore-based sound designer and electronic innovator User Friendly, and New York virtuoso guitarist-composer Álvaro Domene come together to craft and embody a sound-world that is both strikingly intricate and emotionally resonant. This four-track release is a masterful confluence of digital precision, creativity, and organic expression, where synthesizers and electronic instruments intertwine with live guitar performance to create a listening experience that strikes as cutting-edge, visionary, cerebral and palpably human, through a dense and immersive journey that feels like much more than its modest length might suggest. At just four compositions, EXU3DC feels remarkably expansive, with each piece offering a vast wealth of mature ideas and sonic detail that invite repeated listening sessions, moving fluidly between and through different electronic and acoustic music traditions, glitch, ambient, avant-garde jazz, and even post-metal territories, resulting in a beautifully unpredictable dialogue, a back-and-forth where tension and release feel like the album’s heartbeat. At Iluso, we cannot recommend this music enough, and are eager to hear what comes next from the duo. Iluso Records, December 2024.

Álvaro Pérez & Álvaro Domene

"Standards, the new album from Domene and frequent collaborator Álvaro Pérez is out now via Iluso Records, and, in typical Domene fashion, it's an absolute brain-buster. If you're into the truly avant-garde side of jazz and guitar music, it’s well worth your time. The take on Mancini’s “Days of Wine and Roses” is one of those sublime moments when experimental music also hits you straight in the heart." - Wolf Rambatz "What the two Álvaros have done here is unique and novel. Jazz standard playing means many different things to many different players and listeners. Here, these two gentlemen have found new implications and personal expressions for standards that nobody has ever approached or explored before. They have brilliantly illuminated aspects of the standards recorded here that no past listeners have ever been exposed to. I suggest you listen with open ears and open minds and prepare to be astonished. Prepare yourselves not to be cuddled and coddled by the familiar expectations of listening to jazz musicians playing standards that have been played millions of times before. Be prepared for a listening voyage through time warps and space warps to new dimensions; far beyond where ANY jazz players have been before." - Henry Kaiser

Álvaro Domene & Álvaro Pérez

As a follow-up to CIRCUMSTELLAR [ ilusorecords.bandcamp.com/album/circumstellar ], RE-ENTRY, the new release by guitarist-composer-producer Álvaro Domene and saxophonist-composer Álvaro Pérez represents the next step in the evolution of this project's thrilling sound that draws inspiration from orchestral, jazz, electronic, and metal musics, as well as cosmology and radical politics. Make sure you read the liner notes which were written in real time by astrophysicist Luke Keller as he experienced the album for the first time.