Paolo Angeli

Recorded in Australia, Brasil, Italy, Japan, Turkey and America on his 2015/16 world tour, these excellent recordings offer an astonishing range of styles and sounds – all somehow emanating from Angeli’s fingers and feet – and his highly modified, prepared, extended and amplified giant Sardinian guitar which – like Angeli himself – is routinely able do several very different things at once. You have to keep reminding yourself as you listen that this is just one person with one instrument, working in real time. And even knowing that, it’s hard to figure out sometimes how what you hear is technically possible – and there are no loops or machines to help out. More importantly, the music itself is great and able – like Sun Ra’s Arkestra – to absorb coherently within itself a vast range of differing styles: from the deeply traditional to the extremely experimental – orchestrated and articulated with a mixture of mysterious and familiar sonorities. Talea is a document in which imagination, technology, executive skill, virtuosic technique and a deep musicality conspire to produce a satisfying, immersive, unpredictable and very personal music of great maturity.