Angelo Petronella

Long awaited new album by the enigmatic composer Angelo Petronella, in a superb piece of electroacoustic microsound, intertwining scrupulous minimalism, environmental recordings, and an intense drone nebula.  The liner notes to Rimandi E Scoperte are esoteric to say the least, with statements like "In my place there is an arch, both an entrance and a barrier, both a passage and a wall" which clarify little in terms of how this music was made or what processes are involved. That's probably the way it should be too, and a big part of the intrigue here lies in the mystery of it all.

As with this week's other entry into Die Schachtel's Composers series (Osvaldo Coluccino's Neuma Q) there are comparisons to be made with Francisco Lopez's extreme electroacoustic experiments, with harsh, piercing frequencies cutting through suggestively industrial atmospherics and processed metal clanking. The first of these three pieces howls into life, slowly morphing from a grey, time-stretched clump of drone into a searing high frequency shimmer. Soon enough a kind of resonant, reflective glow develops around the drone and the tones slowly ebb away to reveal a closely mic-ed pitter-pat of percussive textures. It's all very abstract but clinically well-made.

The second composition makes more extensive use of field recordings, applying extreme spectral filtering to render them alien and robotic. It's this middle section of the disc that probably represents the finest work here, although the comparatively lo-fi, waspish screech of the third and final track makes for a thrillingly visceral conclusion.