Wharf Cat Records

The all new Horoscope record Mastered by Carl Saff. 1-50 are hand numbered.

About Carne.

Carne. is the new record by Rene J. Nunez-Cabrera, who performs and records under the name Horoscope. Carne., the third in a trilogy of records for Wharf Cat Records, presents a blurred tension between the roots of traditional Cuban music and a yearning for detachment and freedom from nostalgia. While exploring his Cuban-American culture and its history in electro-acoustics and melodramatics, Nunez-Cabrera creates a song-cycle that is both abstract and autobiographical.

Carne. was written and performed by Nunez-Cabrera, using synth, tape, vocals, clave, and effects, and features Elsner Nino and Cesar Toribio on percussion, Dory Bello on vocals, Drew McDowall on vibraphone, and Mickey D. Grand, IV, on saxophone and composition. Recorded in Brooklyn, New York, with additional source material recorded in Miami, Florida, in 2018. Mastered by Carl Saff.

About Horoscope

Horoscope is Rene J. Nunez-Cabrera, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and released his debut El Espejo y el Mar on Wharf Cat in 2015. This was followed by the Misogyny Stone LP on Wharf Cat in 2017 and the Nature Will Keep Growing Even After You Have Lost Everything 12” on Ascetic House. Although Nunez-Cabrera has performed regularly in the New York City area and toured the U.S., early 2019 saw the first Horoscope performances in Europe. After the release of the Carne. LP in 2019, Horoscope will be touring the U.S. and Europe once again.

A drone whines in the distance; Horoscope jettisons a new 5-track LP titled Misogyny Stone. It has prescient timing: here we sit at the abyss of masculine power. Originally from Miami Florida but living in New York for over a decade, Rene J Nunez-Cabrera produces raw sonic compositions indebted to the visceral experience of performance. The new LP, his second for Wharf Cat Records, expands his palette of sound and exhibits the artist’s range in 5 succinct opi: from paranoid, buzzing headscapes, to meditative, industrial drumming. Washes and other gestures of contemporary noise abound, but the ultimate descriptor for Nunez’s penchant is mood. The title track contains Nunez’s version of a deep club jam, intertwining light and dark, low and high, with Kathryn Undorfer’s spoken word sitting right in the middle, sonically spotlighted. “Narcissist Vague” has a religious breadth despite its relatively short existence; while “Azebache Necklace Bought to Protect My Daughter” is a snare-pegged story of delivering a totem; “New Piece (for Christian Mirande)” starts with an organ’s lament, creepily. Nunez’s distorted, layered vocals then build into a desperate chorus of screams. Horoscope’s sound is embedded in the struggles of personhood. Through modular manipulations and his acute utility of pedals and tapes loops, Nunez de- and reconstructs the dynamics of gender relations: look into the misogyny stone; it is opaque and bleak.

Horoscope is the multimedia project of Miami native and Brooklyn resident, Rene J Nunez Cabrera. Cabrera's live performances are as much a raw, uncensored vehicle of personal catharsis as they are a ritualistic forecast of what the future may hold for those who attend.  With numerous cassette releases on labels such as Ascetic house and Acid Casualty Productions and tours with a wide range of artists, Horoscope has been a fixture in contemporary noise circles.

Compared to his often violent and confrontational live sets, Cabrera's debut vinyl release is a more meditative affair. In the artist's words, El Espejo el y Mar evokes, "watching the moon illuminate a path across the water." Synth lines glimmer and undulate, while waves of sound rise and subside at a cosmic pace. Composed, arranged and recorded with only a QCS MS-20 synthesizer, Tascam 4 track tape recorder and a Tarot deck, El Espejo el y Mar channels the more introspective aspects of Cabrera's live set, lulling listeners into a daze where he invites them to create a horoscope all their own.