Alessandro Cortini

CD edition. Hospital Productions debut from Nine Inch Nails’ Alessandro Cortini, a suite of 9 analogue synth pieces complete with found and ambient sounds. Alessandro Cortini is best known as the lead electronics performer in Nine Inch Nails’, but in recent years his work as ‘Sonoio' and a pair of fine albums for Important Records under his own name have highlighted his own individual productions. Known as one of the pre-eminent Buchla masters in North America, Cortini makes a surprising departure on this debut album for Hospital Productions by making use of little more than a Roland MC 202 fed through a delay pedal and ambient sound recordings taken in various hotel rooms recorded direct, sometimes into a small portable speaker system. “I liked to walk around the room with a handheld recorder to hear where the sequence would sound better, turn on faucets, open doors or windows to see how the ambient sounds would interact with the MC 202/delay/speaker sound…” The result is a beautiful, evocative, highly unusual suite of tracks, quite removed from the Modular/Kosmische revivalism that’s been so preeminent over the last half decade. ‘Sonno' is soaked in atmosphere, those background recordings imbuing proceedings with a fizzing resonance that’s impossible to recreate artificially, making for essential listening for anyone who can’t get enough of classic material from ENO or AFX and bored with cheap imitations. Highly Recommended.