Ernest Gonzales – Natural Traits
Friends of Friends: 2012
It is so refreshing to hear San Antonio’s Ernest Gonzales meddle in both analog and digital instrumentation on his latest album Natural Traits. Not in the sense that the sound of a guitar is more pleasing than that of a synth. Or in the sense that real percussion is more true than a drum machine. No, it’s more like the sound of branches sprouting forth from a tree, already full of non-uniform leaves, roots in various genres and a phyla so unique it makes an arborist question science.
It’s not entirely new for Gonzales, but his music tends to absorb various instrumentations and genre-defining characteristics. It’s not uncommon for a Ernest Gonzales album to include hip hop beats, steady beat, pure instrumentation, natural percussion and synth melodies. The track “Untitled Love Song”. from the album Been Meaning to Tell You, is a fine example. The track begins in one genre and ends in another. Natural Traits, tiptoes in these footsteps by laying on heavier electronic influences in the later half of the 10-track album, which ends on a Dntel cover of “When Synchronicity Prevails”.
This album, somehow amidst so much variety, has a theme. That theme is a feeling not a sound. Each song on Natural Traits is a more natural and melancholy version of Been Meaning to Tell You. The most obvious comparison here is the lack of Gonzales’s use of 8-bit sounds, which was spread thick across Been Meaning to Tell You. Instead, Gonzales allows the more natural, analog feel to shine through the digital topcoat.
To say that Gonzales has tried something new here would not be entirely accurate. His 2009 EP, Self Awakening could have been the B-side to Natural Traits. The familiar vibe is appreciated. Self Awakening was good in 2009. Drastic change is mutation. Slow change is evolution.
Gonzales is evolving.
3 out of 5