Drag City released Traveling Light on Thu Oct 23 2025. The 7 track Leftfield release features Rafael Toral. **Drag City** has also released vinyl by [Bcmc](/artist/bcmc), [White Fence](/artist/white-fence), [Tommy Peltier](/artist/tommy-peltier), [Circle X](/artist/circle-x), and [Bill Callahan](/artist/bill-callahan). Browse the [Drag City catalogue](/label/drag-city).

Rafael Toral was born in Lisbon, 1967 and played his first gig as a drummer in 1984, but would be noted instead as a guitarist. In the early 1990's he created a blend of ambient and rock, recording acclaimed albums like Wave Field (Drag City) or Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance (Touch). By the early 2000's, in a radical shift he launched the 'Space Program', a 15 year project exploring an approach to electronic music based on silence, through physical gesture and human decision-making on phrasing and swing, deeply inspired by post-free jazz. The resulting music, 'melodic without notes, rhythmic with no beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free', has been described as 'a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers'.  His thinking and practicing an understanding of silence as 'space', with a clear function in music creation, is also a metaphor for social relationships and a statement on information and sensory overload. In 2018 Toral entered a third phase in his course, prenounced with Moon Field (Room 40), in which his jazz-like phrasing moves into a wider landscape and appears to, in a way, come full circle with his beginnings. Performing solo or in numerous collaborations, he has been touring throughout the world. In 2014 he relocated to the mountains in central Portugal for a more sustainable life.

Traveling Light

About Traveling Light