Luciano Cilio

For the first time ever, Dialoghi Del Presente is available remastered from the original master tapes. One of the most elusive, heartbreaking records to emerge from the Italian avant-garde of the 1970s - finally given the treatment it deserves. Luciano Cilio was a ghost even before he became one. Born in Naples in 1950, he moved through the city's artistic underground - collaborating with Alan Sorrenti, American singer-songwriter Shawn Phillips, experimental theater groups - always at the margins, always searching. A virtuoso guitarist, a self-taught composer, an architect of silences. He left behind only this single album before taking his own life at 33.

Dialoghi Del Presente (1977) exists outside of time. Produced by Renato Marengo, the record unfolds in four "quadri" - tableaux of impossible delicacy. Strings hover. Woodwinds sigh. A wordless female voice drifts through like fog. Piano notes fall into vast spaces. And always, Cilio's guitar - intimate, solitary, unbearably tender. This is music that breathes. Music where silence carries as much weight as sound.

Comparisons fail, but they help: the devotional stillness of Popol Vuh. The crystalline suspension of Arvo Pärt's "Für Alina." The spectral beauty of Mark Hollis's solo work - recorded two decades later. Jim O'Rourke put it best: "You can feel in the music a sort of necessity that can rarely be found, like in This Heat's debut or Nick Drake's Pink Moon - this enormous weight bearing on its creator, the absolute need to exorcize it from his life."

The closing "Interludio" begins with Cilio alone, plaintive guitar in hand. Strings and woodwinds gather around him, then recede. And he is alone again. As he always was.

Superior Viaduct's edition reproduces the original sleeve design. A necessary document. Handle with care.