★Die Schachtel
repeat!
The restless experimentation and creativity of Manuel Zurria (of Alter Ego fame) has resulted in a brilliant series of collaborative works with legendary composers such as Luc Ferrari, Alvin Lucier, Arvo Part, John Cage, Morton Feldman, László Sáry, Louis Andriessen, Aldo Clementi, Zoltan Jeney, Stefano Scodanibbio, Salvatore Sciarrino, Jonathan Harvey and Kevin Volans. A truly stunning mixture of electronic and longform electro-acoustic pieces, repetitive ethnic rhythms, drones and delay, field…
7000 Oaks
A fierce and hypnotic music that wildly combines free jazz with elements of contemporary electroacoustic music and microtonal interplays. 7kOAKS – Massimo Pupillo (Zu, Original Silence) Luca Venitucci (Zeitkratzer, Ossatura) Alfred 23 Harth (Cassiber, Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Quintet) Fabrizio Spera (Ossatura, Blast) manage to build up and maintain a feverish tension without ever loosening intensity.The six compositions on this record come off as a very intense kind of blowing session, where the…
action silence prayer
** LAST COPIES** This solo work by the 3/4hadbeeneliminated guitarist Stefano Pilia can aptly be defined “ecstatic”, in the purest sense of the term. Each guitar note seems to emanate from beneath an invisible surface, lingering for a few moments only to drop back down and be replaced by another; different harmonics emerge creating a restless resonance, and tiny clusters of melody appear and disappear before fading in the haze of a gorgeous drone. Stefano Pilia (1978) lives and works in Bologna.…
knots
** LAST COPIES** Italian drummer Andrea Belfi truly drives his new solo release into a poly-rhythmic drum circle from another dimension. The whole work not only sounds wonderful but, more importantly, Andrea Belfi has developed a strong spatial sense characterized by a crystal clear cymbal tone, deep, warm bass drum, drone-like electronica and a never ending groove.Belfi manages to combine all the pieces of his puzzle into something with a consistent, downcast mood (The Wire)really a beautiful p…
Insiememusicadiversa
** CD Box. The white industrial cardboard box includes an audio CD, a 12-page booklet, five folded posters with graphical scores, plus “Roulette”, a clock-like gadget originally used as the score of the aleatory composition with the same title.** Insieme Musica Diversa, which can be translated in different ways (as diverse music toghether, or different collective music ecc.) truly is a source of endless enchantment. Merging elements of DIY electronica, psychedelia, noise, progressive and free-fo…
Å
Å (which is the first and the last letter of some Scandinavian alphabet) is a young trio of musicians on violin, exotic percussions, theremin, guitar, synth and piano, who have created a remarkably original world of sound. Although one can hear occasional influences from kraut rock style and the early minimalism, this sound is uniquely Italian in its sense of sound, space and time. An imaginative, meditative, bizarre, courageous and nostalgic music consisting in spontaneous compositions and impr…
punctum contra punctum
Aldo Clementi marks out the distance with an absolute refusal to provide narratives, whether of tension resolved, or simply of that logically unending succession of states of being so dear to many of his contemporaries. His materials, whether gathered from a tonal past, generated as a jeu d'esprìt from the names of dedicatees, or produced by a purely abstract process, are projected into a rotational steady state that has no logical end or beginning. (David Osmond-Smith, 2005)
On the occasion of …
Azioni
** very last copies ** Il Gruppo was a brilliant and prolific composer's collective exploring extended techniques and new sound sources through the medium of improvisation. Although very much a product of its time, their music remains timeless. They were instrumental in founding a radical tradition of western musical improvisation that owed little or nothing to anybody and created some of the strangest music ever made. They were utterly unique. (from John Zorn liner notes, NYC 2006)
This delu…
I Luoghi del Potere
Art Fleury's “I luoghi del Potere” is another gem that we excavated from the past, which makes us wonder once again on how intense and creative the Italian avant scene of the seventies was, and how much we have forgotten about it. This is timeless music that redefines the borders of our experience and perception, and urges us to reconsider the impact of an Idea, when it functions as the soul and the engine of an artistic work. ... while i can certainly hear nods towards Henry Cow (with whom they…
arpe eolie
One of the most adventurous composers and performers of the Italian avant garde scene, member of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, great performer of the music of John Cage, Bertoncini started in the early ‘70s to design spectacular and visually fascinating “sound sculptures”, based on the aeolian sound principle. Amongst his more spectacular installations: Vele, a massive aeolian harps (more than 7 metres high); Venti (winds), for 20 aeolian sound generators and 40 performers; and…
sound sculpture
** LAST COPY** special art multiple, consisting in a limited edition of 25 copies in pure nickel, with special plexiglass box, signed and numbered by the author. Fully playable on regular turntable, although due to the nature of the object (very thin nickel plate) the wow and flutter values can be substantially higher than a regular vinyl record.  ÂÂ
The tail of the tiger
** VERY LAST COPIES** As is the case with La Monte Young's Theater of Eternal Music, David Hyke's Harmonic Choir and Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Band, Roberto Laneri has had a life long penchant for the droning mysteriosa of the Sound Current and with the Prima Materia ensemble he has expressed it in a disciplined, expansive and singular way (Terry Riley). In 1977 an obscure Italian private label issued a record that sounded like it came from outer space. A long and dense trance-inducing d…
Sintesi da un diario
Angelo Petronella is an avowed devotee of acousmatics, a musique concrete practice that encourages as much disassociation as possible between the sound on record and the source it was taken from. And though many of Sintesi da un diario's sounds are culled from such well-worn locales as children's playgrounds, country landscapes, and factory floors, repeated exposure reveals a composer intent on draining any familiarity in the pursuit of a total removal of all convention. Birdsong is pulled taut,…
Watch me getting back the end
Christa Pfangen are Andrea Belfi and Mattia Coletti. The name is an homage to Nico, although the music has obviously no relation with the icon of the New York avant garde scene. They belong to the new electroacoustic/improv/avant-rock scene which is taking shape in Italy and includes such names as 3/4 Had Been Eliminated, Valerio Tricoli, Å, Stefano Pilia and others. Working with percussion, treated guitar and an array of different objects and noises, they have given birth to a dynamic wo…
Exposé
Based on a series of 33 musical ideas written, printed, framed and 'exposed' in a recent installation in Milan, Exposé is the first of a new cycle of works as well as the result of Alessandro Bosetti's fascination with speech loops. The mesmerizing voice of Audrey Chen, endlessly repeating the same sentence over the entire duration of each piece, is full of musical nuances, and it rewards close attention. The result is a weird and fascinating experience, that takes the listener through a surreal…
Non Io
Bachi da Pietra (The stone worms) is a two-men band whose dark and resonating music wraps around tunes of desolate candour and lyrics (in Italian) as dark and imaginative as broken love can be. A relentless drumming hovers over a huge wash of ride cymbal and a deep, plaintive voice, which is able to capture sadness, anger and yearning. The entire album is a visceral emotional journey: the dissonant blues-based songs develop around the steady drone of the singer's voice, a trance-inducing vocal p…