“You might think that the disc by Marutti and Giordani is a re-issue, as you saw the title already reviewed in Vital Weekly 1223. But I wrote, “that this piece is the first part of a bigger work to be released in the future”; this is the bigger work. Well, or part of it at least, as these are part two and three of the work and all of this is (again) part of a multimedia project by Massimo Indellicati, called ‘Aquology – Oceano Interiore’, and you don’t need to be a linguistic expert to realize this is all about life below the waves. Whereas the first was twenty-two minutes, these pieces span thirty and forty-five minutes. While splashes of water are part of this as well (as before), in “Parte II – Ansia e Sollievo’ (‘Anxiety and Relief’), there are also birds, church bells and street sounds. For some reason it is not all about the sea then, isn’t it? Maybe the multimedia project could tell us more about it, but that’s the part we are missing here. Marutti is the man responsible for synthesizers, samples, treatments, mixing and mastering, whereas Giordani handles the field recordings, tapes, treatments and mixing. All of this sees the music continuing where we left the first part; mucho drones are laid out, solemnly and peacefully meandering away, or slow (oceanic?) drift, while on top of that the field recordings come and go; it almost sounds like a stream of conscious sounds, or maybe like mixing blind from a bunch of unlabelled sources and see what happens. This is a seventy-four-minute release that could have been a three-hour piece as well. It moves back and forth between louder and quieter sections, never becoming a true noise anthem or a total ambient path. It has some fine urgency and is a true, dark beauty.”
Back in December I worked on the master for a vinyl edition of Alvin Lucier‘s “Vespers”. The album includes “Chambers” on Side B and is released today by Blume.
Shortly after the first release created in collaboration with field-recordist Carlo Giordani, out on Taâlem since February, I am truly proud to introduce a new full-lenght CD – released by St.An.Da./Silentes – which is part of the same body of work that Carlo and me have patiently built during 2011-2019.
In 2005 I had the chance to know Carlo Giordani’s work through Paolo Ippoliti – of Logoplasm fame – who had hosted a large collection of his field-recordings on the S’agita Recordings website. At a time when the field-recordings craze was beginning to spread, I immediately realized that Carlo was a veteran in this… field! A grown man with a very peculiar listening talent and technical ability, as well as a special sensitivity.
After re-proposing some of his works on a digital compilation that celebrated the first ten years of Afe Records, Carlo and I remained in touch, often exchanging recordings and opinions, but without trying our hands in a ‘real’ collaboration.
In 2011 Massimo Indellicati of Ambiente H finally gave us the opportunity to work together, inviting us to provide music to accompany some of his experimental movies, whose main theme was “water”. That was the input which, over the years, again to satisfy Massimo’s need for a soundtrack to his many projects – including the installation “Aquology – Oceano interiore” – led to the creation of a series of pieces that Carlo and I decided to collect under the title “Impressioni organizzate di ansie liquide” (“Organized Impressions of Liquid Anxieties”).
As already mentioned, the first part in this series, entitled “Furia e abbandono (galleggiare, annaspare, arrendersi e lasciarsi trasportare)” – which translates into “Fury and Abandonment (floating, struggling, surrendering and being carried away)”, was recently released by Taâlem. Originally exceeding 30 minutes, it was completely revised to suit the 3″ MiniCDr format.
Following the release on Taâlem, I approached Stefano Gentile – founder of the memorable Amplexus and now head of the well known Silentes and 13 labels, among others – and he was kind enough to offer us a slot on St.An.Da., one of his many creatures.
Despite the hard times that we all had to live in the recent months and the many restrictions that such an awful new reality has brought in, it only took a few weeks to finalize this release. Stefano was particularly supportive of this project, and the artwork is graced by pictures that he took on purpose, while listening to the music on headphones during a solitary excursion on a late winter day.
The CD includes the second and third long parts of a total of five, namely “Ansia e sollievo (allarmi, turbinii e vortici, con quieto finale)” – which translates into “Anxiety and Relief (alarms, swirls and whirls, with quiet ending)”, and “Attesa (con immutabile presenza, il lento scorrere)” – which is Italian for “Waiting (with unchanging presence, the slow flowing)”.
Both tracks include exceptional field-recordings made by Carlo during an expedition he took in July 2011 at the dams of Venerocolo and Pantano dell’Avio Lakes in the Brescia district, Northern Italy. Both dams are located in restricted areas and permission had to be granted to visit them. As you easily guess, this is not your everyday/average stuff, but a precious audio-documentation of two very particular places usually accessible only to the personnel who keep them running.
Other field-recordings which are part of these compositions were taken in a metalworking factory and they include a giant electric oven, a 6000-ton press, machineries that move wreckage to melt it down… You get the picture.
Treatments to the original recordings were done by Carlo and me, using INA-GRM plug-ins and other software. My contributions were created mainly with hardware analogue and digital synthesizers: Korg MS-20, Waldorf Microwave XT and my favourite, the mighty Roland JD-800. I also sampled and re-played some of the field-recordings taken by Carlo, and added other audio samples from my personal library.
The title we gave to the final work is clearly inspired to the sensations that the tracks gave us upon repeated, and repeated, and repeated, listening. The titles we choose for the various parts are also inspired by that, but also have a ‘technical’ side which pertains to some of the field-recordings that were used in them.
We believe that we were successful at ‘melting’ our different sound worlds and attitudes, me and my synthesizers and Carlo and his field-recordings. We are fond that the various elements sustain each other and that the tracks have a strong narrative and evocative potential.
Here’s the first excerpt from “Impressioni Organizzate di Ansie Liquide” by Andrea Marutti & Carlo Giordani, out on St.an.da. / Silentes, May 8, 2020.
This work is presented on a glass-mastered CD limited to 200 copies and housed in a deluxe six panel digipack with black finish. The artwork features pictures by Stefano Gentile.
“Andrea Marutti has had a release on Taâlem before, and there was a time when his name popped a lot more in these pages. I have no idea why not so much these days. Music by Carlo Giordani has been reviewed only once, it seems, in Vital Weekly 727. He takes credit for ‘field-recordings, tapes, treatments, mixing’, while Marutti is responsible for ‘synthesizers, samples, treatments, mixing, mastering’. I understand that this piece is the first part of a bigger work to be released in the future, but it is something that they have been working on for some time. The cover says it was “recorded and assembled between December 2013 and May 2019” and it is part of a soundtrack to “Aquology – Oceano Interiore”, a multimedia project by Massimo Indellicati. The aquatic theme one could not miss in the splashes of water sounds that we hear in the opening of the piece and which run throughout this piece. It all has that below sea surface quality, the soundtrack, I imagine, of being inside a submarine. Now here I would think the treatments are all done with the use of computer technology. Large chunks of field recordings are processed and together with those who still have a more natural feeling combined into a large, twenty-two-minute soundscape of drips, splashes and the uber-drone of what sounds like a submarine engine humming in the back. It is something that could have fitted on the Mystery Sea label, had that still existed. This is an excellent work and it made me curious about the rest of it.”
After “Sleepless Nights | Lysergic Mornings” – which was made available just a little bit more than two months ago – Jean-Marc of taâlem was kind enough to release another effort of mine, this time created in collaboration with field-recordist Carlo Giordani.
As usual, per label’s policy this EP – entitled “Impressioni organizzate di ansie liquide” – is available as a digital download and as two different editions presented on the tiny and collectable 3″ MiniCDr format. One of the two variants comes in a pro-printed 2-panel mini-digipack and is strictly limited to 32 numbered copies, the other is housed in a regular plastic mini-jewelcase and is offered to the public in an unlimited edition.
In 2005 I had the chance to know Carlo Giordani‘s work through Paolo Ippoliti – of Logoplasm fame – who had hosted a large collection of his field-recordings on the S’agita Recordings website. At a time when the field-recordings craze was beginning to spread, I immediately realized that Carlo was a veteran in this… field! A grown man with a very peculiar listening talent and technical ability, as well as a special sensitivity.
After re-proposing some of his works on a digital compilation that celebrated the first ten years of Afe Records, Carlo and I remained in touch, often exchanging recordings and opinions, but without trying our hands in a ‘real’ collaboration.
In 2011 Massimo Indellicati of Ambiente H finally gave us the opportunity to work together, inviting us to provide music to accompany some of his experimental movies, whose main theme was “water”. That was the input which, over the years, again to satisfy Massimo’s need for a soundtrack to his many projects – including the installation “Aquology – Oceano interiore” – led to the creation of a series of pieces that Carlo and I decided to collect under the title “Impressioni organizzate di ansie liquide” (“Organized Impressions of Liquid Anxieties”).
This first part, entitled “Furia e abbandono (galleggiare, annaspare, arrendersi e lasciarsi trasportare)” – which translates into “Fury and Abandonment (floating, struggling, surrendering and being carried away)” – originally exceeded 30 minutes and has been completely revised on occasion of this publication to make it more ‘straight to the point’ and suitable for the 3″ MiniCDr format.
“I’ve enjoyed the Belgian label Taâlem (which grew out of a previous label called Harmonie) ever since their beginning in the late ’90s. They mainly put out 3” CDrs (a format that reminds me of trading cards) of darkly atmospheric music marked by electro-acoustic disturbance. This current batch is the label’s 129th, 130th and 131st release, which shows how prolific they’ve become. The 20-minute limit of the format suits this stuff perfectly. Concise statements that leave me wanting more, forcing me to return and listen more deeply. The first disc is by the Italian artist Andrea Marutti, who used to run a label called Afe Records and also records as Amon, Spiral, Never Known and Lips Vago. His latest 3” for Taâlem is, as the title implies, a hallucinogenic drone that throws in some weird wrenches as it gets closer to the end. Marutti works in the post-Lustmord “dark ambient” mode here, starting out with ominous blankets with low throb and slow-motion watery threat. After several minutes, the curtains lift and with cleansing light comes children talking and roughly-recorded scrape that seems like it jumped in from a different record. It’s a neat tonal shift, one that continues into Marutti’s second track, “Peter’s Psychedelic Breakfast”. That title is, of course, a nod towards Pink Floyd, though its unclear who Peter is or what the Floyd connection is. This track is another drone, though lighter in mood than the opener. The strangest part is the very end, in which the sound fades and dissipates, leaving a coda of digital glitches as if someone accidentally bumped the microphone or a cord went bad… and then abruptly hits an “off” switch. Weird. […]“
On Christmas day Belgian label taâlem has released the newest installment in their “Homework” series, which consists of a 59 tracks compilation by artists who operate in the Experimental / Drone Music fields. Andrea Marutti‘s “Awake in the Slumbering Gardens”, an unreleased and exclusive effort recorded in the second half of 2019, is featured as opening number.
Earlier this year I worked on the master for a vinyl edition of Luc Ferrari‘s “Dialogue Ordinaire Avec La Machine / Sexolidad”, for which I have also adapted the original graphics to a new beautiful gatefold sleeve. The album is released today by Elica.
