Tino – For the Stratus Family

I followed Tino first for his stunning visual artworks, but became captivated by the way his sound collages provided an essential complementary component for them, most recently Interpreting Clouds from Sound as Language, so I’m extremely honored to present the video for “For the Stratus Family,” a sound collage that might echo our benevolent space brothers calling to us.

“Here, fragments of forgotten VHS tapes and the kind of video effects used by public-access television collide over the instrumental track. Frenetic synths and field recordings morph into a passage of garbled poetry and looping windchimes, while documentaries on flying saucers and camcorder footage of Tino himself are faded and warped on-screen.”

Santino Gonzales, who records music under his nickname “Tino,” is an artist from Los Lunas, New Mexico. Moved by the landscape of his childhood, Tino uses ufology, adobe, & radio to investigate cultural attitudes around the fear of alienation & the desire for connection. Lately, Tino has been exploring how these interests relate to ideas about home.

Sonically, Tino uses improvisation and looping to create soundscapes inspired by times past. Fractured melodies weave in and out of one another, punctuated by radio static and home recordings. This sound collage, with instruments both old and new, situates Tino among contemporary sound artists and ambient musicians.

About the song, Tino says:

When I recorded Interpreting Clouds in 2020, I was thinking a lot about growing up and the experience of being under the big sky back home in Los Lunas — faded memories of a time when clouds seemed to carry a larger sense of wonder than they do now. Outside my window, the big fluffs repeating and dancing with each other, changing shape across the blue, reminded me of my childhood fascination with clouds. 

At the same time, I was deeply struggling through a sleep disorder. So, the project became a way for me to conjure up these memories and create sonic landscapes that welcomed rest. The hazy sense of sleeplessness I was experiencing also came through. In this headspace, sounds float in and out of one another, time drifts, tracks skip, and tape wears away into atmospheres of sound. Ever so often, the voices of loved ones come through, hushed little moments creeping in from recordings on old phones.

Using analog electronics, like a public access TV station from days gone by, the music videos for this project were made by collaging VHS recordings from my archive of old tapes. Moments from Flying Saucer documentaries and educational programs about weather systems overlay, while video synthesizer animations pirouette atop the ghostly images. When the onslaught of video in the media at the time seemed to arouse anxiety and impede rest, the combination of aged VHS videos and homemade ambient music in Interpreting Clouds provided, for me, a sense of calm and stillness.

For the Stratus Family has all these touchstones; an aged voice memo gives way to field recordings of my childhood backyard. Frenetic guitar samples and synthesizer chirps morph into birds whistling. Chimes ebb and flow above warped poetry, repeating into the horizon. The whole track comes to a windy close when the sounds of noise generators for sleep merge with radio static, creating something reminiscent of warm waves rolling in the tide. These sonic anchors grounding me, like a tired old antenna upon an aged rooftop, still sending out messages after 32 years. The soft sounds undulating from within, standing as some kind of hushed resistance against the chaos of the outside world, and the difficulties of achieving a good night’s rest. Here on this rooftop, interpreting clouds, I’m transmitting waves of sound and patterns of light into the sky, and I’m less tired, and that feels good.

Santino Gonzales

Get Interpreting Clouds on Bandcamp.