Gigi Masin

Featuring: Mirco Salvadori

Italy’s prince of chill Gigi Masin teams up with multitalented muse Mirco Salvadori for a tender excursion into the world of the piano in an attempt to build a unified poetry of art and sound in Hazkara. I mean, that’s pretty much a guarantee if you include a 48-page book with a CD, words and pictures and all. The first thing I noticed was the prominence of the piano on this one, more so than recent Music From Memory compilation Talk to the Sea, anyway. Yeah, I’m a pedestrian Masin fan. Being promised ‘ambient’ by the press release left me a bit mystified that the first 3 tracks are sad piano etudes with minimal electronic augmentation that hardly fits anything but ‘chill piano music’. Max Richter fans, are you listening? But come the 4th track and things get airier, matching the expansiveness of his past work but cunningly and gradually introduced as the record progresses. Things just got dreamy. It’s almost like M. Ostermeier jamming with Olan Mill with the help of some valium. Not entirely sure what Salvadori is doing - the press release mentions ‘intimate lyrics’ but not a voice has uttered yet, and we’re at track 6. Maybe it’s spoken in a psychic tongue that only some can understand. Joan says she can hear them but the rest of us have no souls so it figures. Nah, I’m sure his presence and contributions to the booklet were inspiring for Masin and the others involved. Basically, it’s lovely.