Murcof is the performing and recording name of Mexican electronic musician Fernando Corona. Corona was born in 1970 in Tijuana, Mexico and raised in Ensenada. He was for a time a member of the Tijuana-based Nortec Collective of electronic musicians under the Terrestre project name. In 2000, he returned to Tijuana. Since 2006, Corona has been living in Barcelona, Spain.

Murcof’s music is sparse, minimalist electronic music. Many of his compositions are founded on abstract, glitchy, sometimes complex electronic percussion. Harmonic and melodic influences come from classical music (modern classical music, musique concrète, holy minimalism, micropolyphony, baroque music, etc.), ambient music, drone music, berlin school synthesizer music, ethnic music and free improvisation. Rhythms are derived from minimal techno, dub, glitch, industrial music and IDM, and are often aligned around a 4/4 beat. The more recent works in the Murcof catalogue no longer include electronic beats.

His earlier works, like the 2001 EP Monotonu, feature orchestral instruments sampled from recordings of works by modern composers such as Arvo Pärt and Morton Feldman. Some of his later works, like the 2005 album Remembranza, incorporate samples of Corona and his friends playing classical instruments. Besides his personally initiated albums, Corona worked as Murcof on the 2008 commission project The Versailles Sessions, in which he reinterpreted recordings of a baroque ensemble. Live shows of Murcof featured guest musicians from varied musical backgrounds, like jazz trumpet player Erik Truffaz, tabla player Talvin Singh, crossover electronica-classical pianist Francesco Tristano and contemporary composer Philippe Petit.

Released in 2021 on Leaf Label, ‘The Alias Sessions’ brings together all the elements incorporated into the project to date – meticulous sound design, ghostly samples, forceful beats, diaphanous atmosphere – but pushes the sound even further in terms of both abstraction and beauty. This is electronic music of exquisite tension and ecstatic release, moving from barely audible details to explosive peaks, much of it delivered by earth-moving bass. The Alias Sessions is the most ambitious and wide-ranging Murcof album to date. Though Corona created the music himself, the work is again the product of collaboration. He began work on this music in April 2017, when he met with choreographer Guilherme Botelho, leader of Geneva-based dance company Alias, about a new performance piece – ‘Contre-Mondes’. Versions of these compositions make up the first half of the album. Corona continued work with the organisation for a 2018 performance entitled ‘Normal.’ which now forms the second part of the record.

Anticipated by the EP ‘Extended Play No 1’ (Infiné, 2022), ‘Twin Color – Vol 1‘ (Infiné, 2024) marks Murcof’s return to full-length album production, in all its glory and generosity, nearly two decades after the release of Cosmos in 2007. With this new album, Murcof takes a bold step forward, adopting a resolutely cinematic and dystopian narrative, influenced by the great science fiction films of the 1980s. This new direction immerses the listener in atmospheres that are sometimes dark, sometimes imbued with a nostalgic luminosity, drawing inspiration from post-punk and synth-wave, partially reconnecting with his experimentations within the Nortec Collective at the beginning of his career. This album confirms Murcof’s unique sonic signature, blending analog synthesizers and modern production techniques to create a multi-sensory experience, propelling Murcof into a particularly exciting new decade.