Launching a brand-new imprint, Baccano Dischi, comes ‘Racconti Di Aretusa’, a truly astounding collaboration between the legendary Italian Minimalist, Lino Capra Vaccina, and Mai Mai Mai. Channeling a dualism of the ancient histories and cultures of the Mediterranean and the Island of Sicily where it was created, through an intertwining of vibraphone, piano, percussion, electronics, complex drones, and manipulated samples, together this striking partnership has come out of nowhere to establish itself as one of the most captivating records we've encountered this year.

The aura of history is strong, but it can sometimes lead us astray, focusing our attention away from significant happenings in the present day. This can be particularly the case regarding the work of artists whose early efforts are widely celebrated. The comforts of distance and historical affirmation can risk overshadowing the growth and refinement that has built, over many decades, upon those works and produced so much more. Having been active within radical circles of music for more than half a century, first within the legendary ensembles, Aktuala and Telaio Magnetico, before emerging as a solo artist with seminal LPs like 1978's ‘Antico Adagio’, the Italian avant-garde percussionist and composer, Lino Capra Vaccina, has continued to produce singular works over the entire duration of his career, advancing and reconfiguring the movement of Italian Minimalism that he helped found. Over the last decade, through numerous collaborations and solo releases, this momentum has steadily picked up pace, adding dynamic understanding the scope of his remarkable and dynamic practice.

First emerging during the first half of the 1970s as a member of the legendary, groundbreaking ensemble, Aktuala, with Walter and Laura Maioli, among numerous others, the percussionist and composer Lino Capra Vaccina belongs to a generation of artists from Italy that pushed from a grounding in the pop musical counterculture toward radically experimental practices. Following Aktuala’s break-up, Vaccina worked extensively with Juri Camisasca and Franco Battiato on their astounding solo efforts from that period, as well as within the short lived super group Telaio Magnetico (Vaccina, Battiato, Camisasca, Giacomo Di Martino, Roberto Mazza, and Terra Di Benedetto) before embarking on a solo career of his own, which first appeared within the broad cultural awareness with 1978's ‘Antico Adagio’, an album that has become regarded as one of the cornerstones of the singular movement of Italian Minimalism. It would take more than a decade to hear from him again with 1992’s equally extraordinary ‘L’Attesa’, followed by nearly another two decades of recording silence. However, following Die Schachtel’s dedicated reissue and archival initiative to Vaccina’s historical work during the mid to late 2010’s, the composer kicked into high gear, steadily releasing an astounding body of new releases like ‘Arcaico Armonico’, ‘Metafisiche Del Suono’, ‘Perpetual Possibility’, ‘Sincretico Modale’, ‘Free Spirits’, and last year's ‘Syn•Thesis’. The latest of these ‘Racconti Di Aretusa’, an incredible collaboration between Vaccina and Mai Mai Mai, takes this momentum a further step.

Mai Mai Mai is the alias of Toni Cutrone, a key international figure in the contemporary Italian arm of avant-garde/drone scene, who under that moniker and others has configured a remarkable audio/video practice over the last decade or so, examining Mediterranean and Southern Italian folklore. Sometimes described as a 'Mediterranean Hauntology', Mai Mai Mai’s output has side channeled the ghosts of a lost past within bodies of blurred memories and hazy, ritualistic sounds. Regular SoundOhm readers might remember him for ‘Omega Mai’, his killer collaboration with Squadra Omega, issued by Castel Sotterra back in 2021.

Vaccina and Mai Mai Mai initially came together during an artistic residency and festival in Sicily, dedicated to establishing a dialogue between traditional sounds and electronic research. For two weeks, the two artists composed and recorded within the Church of Gesù e Maria in Ortigia, allowing the environment of extraordinary visual and acoustic beauty itself to guide the becoming of their sounds and amplify their spiritual dimension. The resulting four compositions comprise the two sides of ‘Racconti Di Aretusa’, a sonic journey of rare intensity that interweaves each artist's unique take on experimentalism with Mediterranean echoes drawn from both ancient and contemporary realities from the island where it was created.

Named in tribute to the nymph Aretusa, a symbol of Syracuse, whose myth intertwines with water and the memory of distant times, the two artists set out to explore layers of sound and musical memory, searching for new possibilities for listening and interpretation. Beginning with a sprawling sense of ambience established by Mai Mai Mai’s manipulated samples and electronics, as ‘Racconti Di Aretusa’ unfolds Vaccina harnesses his refined and meditative musical sensibility on piano, percussion (cymbals, gongs, etc.), and vibraphone, establishing a remarkable dialog between each artist’s personal sensibility, collectively forming hypnotic and ethereal atmospheres that seem to suspend and transcend time and space. With each piece’s slow forward momentum and tempo established by Vaccina’s delivery of lines on his two primary acoustic instruments - piano and vibraphone - Mai Mai Mai establishes a striking counterpoint with his reinterpretations and transformations of the acoustic material, and delivery of electronic textures, building layered drones, and bristling nodes and punctuations which establishes an evolving sense of atmosphere and mood, within which hypnotic and sometimes abstract rhythms seek a singular dualism and tension.

Remarkably cohesive across its four works, ‘Racconti Di Aretusa’ straddles the space between Minimalism and ambient music, at once meditative, ritualistic, immersive, while oscillating between the sacred and the profane, as well as the present, past, and futures that might be. Perhaps most pertinently, within the album’s two sides lingers the presence of culture and place, working as a third instrument, an active element within the process of composition, moving beyond those things that spoken language can describe into the transcendent and profound.

Unquestionably one of Lino Capra Vaccina’s most moving and captivating collaborations to have appeared within this reinvigorated period in his output, with Mai Mai Mai the legend of Italian Minimalism has found an important partnership, the likes and possibilities of which are rare. Let’s hope this is only the beginning.