Easily one of the most ambitious and historically important releases we've seen so far this year, Soave and Cinedelic's joint release of Egisto Macchi's The Complete AYNA sessions 72 - 76 - sprawling across a stunning 13 CDs and housed in a wooden box - is an absolute mind-bending immersion into some of the most sought-after music by one of the great figures in 20th Century Italian music.

Back in mid-2020, the venerable, Milan based imprints, Soave and Cinedelic, joined forces to release what ended up being one of our favourite releases of the year, the stunning LP Sud E Magia, comprising never before issued recordings by Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza member Egisto Macchi. Now this incredible partnership is back and has raised the bar with yet another astounding body of work from Macchi, The Complete AYNA sessions 72 - 76. Gathering the entirety of the composer's seminal output for the Florence based label, AYNA Records, this box set represents each of these albums' first ever appearance on CD, and in some cases their first reissue on any format.

Most famous for his work within the seminal avant-garde collective, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, like fellow member Ennio Morricone, or more far-flung peers like Bernard Parmegiani and Luc Ferrari, Egisto Macchi (1928-1992) lived something of a double, creative life. While the forward and public aspects of his career were dedicated to the composing and performance of radically experimental music, he also dedicated a substantial amount of his creative energy to a more shadowy existence working within the field of film and television. Macchi composed over 50 cinema soundtracks, and approximately 1000 for documentaries and television shows, and a vast canon of library music - far broader in its aesthetic, but no less experimental - quietly weaving a remarkable field of revolutionary sound that decisively intervened within the popular realm. It is from this body of work that Soave and Cinedelic's box set draws its material.

While far from the full extent of his output during this period, between 1972 and 1976 Macchi embarked upon an incredibly fruitful period, working with the Florence based imprint, AYNA Records, ultimately producing 13 albums - Africa Minima (1972), Comedie Française (1973), Quando, Per Solitudine… (1973), Prigionia (1974), Adagi E Allegri (1974), Nucleo Centrale Investigativo (1974), Il Deserto (1974), Pittura Contemporanea (1975), Pittura Moderna 1 (1975), Pittura Moderna 2 (1975), L'angolo Dei Bambini (1975), Violenza (1976), Messico (1976) - each appearing unabridged and offered autonomously as a single CD within The Complete AYNA sessions 72 - 76. For many listeners - particularly devoted fans of Macchi's efforts - these works represent the pinnacle of his output, marking them as a necessary point of exploration for new and old fans alike.

Blending a remarkably sensitive sense of abstraction with melodic structures that flirt with numerous musical traditions, it would be impossible to sum up the vast range of material that traces its way across the full breadth of the work produced during Macchi's AYNA sessions. Each composition, like the albums that contain them, emerges as a nesting doll, free-standing and discrete, while seamlessly bound within a collective whole of concept and sonority. They are at once visionary and singular, pushing far beyond the normative perceptions of experimental music's boundaries. Perhaps most striking, while forwardly defined by bristling challenges issued by organizations of texture, tone, structure, and interplay, is the sheer seductive beauty and listenability of these works, in part due to the composer's incredible use of rhythm as a binding force that continuously pushes these albums into unexpected zones and makes them unlike anything else, before or since.

It's impossible to sing enough praise for Egisto Macchi's The Complete AYNA sessions 72 - 76. Drawn from the original master tapes and containing a beautiful booklet, it's an absolute must for any fan of Macchi, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, or Italian avant-garde and library music.