Though he made his mark as a mega-producer in the Mexican rock en espańol movement of the late ’80s and ’90s, Argentinian-born Gustavo Santaolalla is best known in America as a film composer. In a way, Santaolalla’s instrumental solo album Ronroco sets the stage for the spacious instrumental style of his celebrated work for film. But unlike the spare country twang of his score to Brokeback Mountain or the Middle Eastern flavor of his score to Babel, Ronroco draws heavily on Santaolalla’s South American heritage. Traditional Argentinian stringed-instruments like the charango, maulincho, and ronroco (the latter of which gives the album its name) strum elegantly through these 12 eerily familiar originals, which sound like wistful folk music from some distant past.
The instruments on Ronroco are higher pitched and not as resonant as their close relative, the guitar, and the difference is magnified by the album’s mostly stark production, which allows every plink to be heard individually. The charming, Celtic-style melody of “Jardin” sounds like it was played by a hammered dulcimer; elsewhere strings are brushed with a hummingbird’s speed and sound more like a mandolin, or plucked delicately for a glassy, harplike effect. The slightly tinny sound of Santaolalla’s strings grants his musical vignettes a strangely rustic feel, as if the maulincho were being picked up for the first time in decades to play tunes from a dusty old songbook that hadn’t been opened for even longer.
There is an undeniable filmic quality to Ronroco. Each piece induces a singular mood that could easily accompany a scene (several of them have). “Gaucho,” built of harmonized guitar lines and enriched with the percussive clinking of a vibraphone, might be the music of a street-corner band as we walk through a rustic Buenos Aires barrio; the charango-led “Iguazu” (used in both The Insider and Babel) is both galloping and weightless, leaving a mysterious impression that would be the perfect background for a poetic voiceover. Taken by itself though, Ronroco works as a compelling song cycle, the indigenous guitars of its 12 tracks twinkling like the stars of 12 constellations in the same night sky.