Estasy

2012 release ** "Estasy is the project of Emiliano Maggi, an Italian singer/songwriter who has spent the last couple of years releasing low-key CD-Rs and collaborating with artists and filmmakers in Rome. A lot of the time his live performances with other artists, well-documented on YouTube, are set to spooky visuals, and in those that aren't Maggi wears quite frightening masks. Sure, quite a bit of that does sound like the sort of standard gimmickry rife in 2012, but there's something about Emiliano Maggi's music that feels genuinely otherworldly and unusual. Maggi's vocal plays a starring role in that strangeness on his debut album, Wild Songs. His high-pitched, androgynous sounding voice is technically a coloratura soprano-- most often a range delivered by female opera singers. In opera, the coloratura soprano is characterised not just by the dizzying heights of their top notes, but by their technical agility too. While Maggi seems a way off performing at classical standard, on songs like "Wonder", his vocal skips and swoops ornately. Though quite different in some aspects, Maggi's voice also calls to mind the likes of Sigur Rós' Jonsi or new Acéphale label-mate Tom Krell's early releases as How to Dress Well. The recordings themselves also share something in common with HtDW's ghostly first demos. Maggi's naturalistic takes on Wild Songs are lo-fi and weave in field recordings as part of the scene. Those far-off touches of real atmosphere and places really help ground Wild Songs. Among the strangeness, those moments pull you back to reality: moments like at the end of "It's a Hard World for Little Things" when the sound of kindling snapping in a fire slowly fades up in the mix, or the howling pack of dogs that accompany Maggi on "Kaspar". Compared with the sparseness of the rest of Estasy's material, "Locus Solus" and "Wild Wants" feel almost maximalist. On both tracks, electronic beats help to anchor Maggi's otherwise untethered melodies: the playful beat of the former allows his subtle melodies to feel almost whimsical, but the latter is elevated by drums to become perhaps the most intense moment on the whole record. It feels like a yearning, natural highlight of the set, as multi-tracked vocals swoop around one another with ease and grace. Wild Songs is an apt title for Estasy's first record. Many of these songs feel like barely captured ideas, almost like happy accidents of rolling tape. Maggi's voice is the star, capable of inspiring genuine strangeness. Its undiluted innateness feels natural among the production's field recording feel. That said, Wild Songs is very rough and ready. At its best it can be utterly startling, but so far Maggi's Estasy project feels more intriguing than truly beguiling."