Edition of 150 copies. The journey from site-specific environmental installation to studio composition rarely produces such compelling results as Massimo Toniutti's Shanghai Files (6 or more ring-shaped films), the inaugural release from Darren Tate's newly founded Fungal Editions. This remarkable work traces its origins back to 2007, when Toniutti created an environmental piece consisting of six pre-recorded sequences of different lengths, each looping on its own speaker suspended from a centuries-old plane tree in the garden of a historic villa. The original installation, titled "6 Pellicole ad Anello" (6 Ring-Shaped Films), created what Toniutti describes as "ideally protective sound films," with the title echoing both technological loops and natural growth rings. This poetic connection between mechanical repetition and organic cycles would prove central to the work's evolution over the following decades.
In 2020, Toniutti revisited those archived audio files - including alternate takes that had remained dormant for over a decade - creating a home-based quadraphonic version that he eventually mixed down into a stereo adaptation. This transformation gave birth to the work's current title: "I pictured the sound files like sticks from the game Shanghai: held in the hand, then released — falling into a chance pattern, a circle of sound shifting with each new drop." When Darren Tate approached Toniutti for a full-length work to inaugurate Fungal Editions, the composer sent an earlier version of what would become the main piece. Tate's immediate approval prompted Toniutti to revisit and expand the material with two additional tracks, creating what he describes as the composition's final form - "revu et corrigé, so to speak." The resulting three-part structure reveals the work's architectural sophistication. The main piece leans toward ambient territories, while the second track "edges closer to the domain of radio art, with cut-ups and sonic manipulations that suggest a more radiophonic intent." The third section serves as what Toniutti calls "a slow, metamorphic wash that alters, dilates, and reconfigures a chosen cluster of the ring-shaped films."
Shanghai Files partly draws on material from Toniutti's documentary soundtrack work around 2007, when he developed techniques for processing sound to create specific backgrounds - or what he came to call "tints." The human voice, originally recorded for those documentaries, appears here "isolated and broken down into tiny, luminous fragments that subtly come to mark the main piece," creating ghostly traces of narrative within abstract sonic environments. The release marks a poignant moment in experimental music history, dedicated "To Gualtiero Toniutti 27.4.1961 – 31.5.2023" - honoring the memory of Massimo's brother Gualtiero. This dedication adds emotional weight to music that already operates in the liminal spaces between memory, environment, and technological mediation.
Fungal Editions presents the work in a beautiful 6-panel Ecopack featuring Toniutti's visual montage created from Darren Tate's nature photographs - a collaborative element that extends the label's commitment to integrating visual and sonic elements. The release was remastered by Colin Potter at IC Studio, ensuring optimal presentation of Toniutti's subtle sonic textures.
