Artist: Various Artists
Title: Invisible Comma
Format: CD
Label: La Cappella Underground
Cat. number: CD2024
Tracks: 8
Playing Time: 45:27
Release date: October 29, 2024
File under: Electronic / Experimental / Synth-Wave / Contemporary
Tracklist:
01. Malasomma – Permacrisis (4:45)
02. Confrontational – Possession (2:54)
03. Lips Vago – Into the Uncertain (6:23)
04. Tristan Da Cuhna – A Cold Field (5:05)
05. Blak Saagan – Black Out a New York (10:23)
06. SabaSaba – Night Plotters (3:17)
07. Chaos Shrine – Incidental Dimensions (7:18)
08. Martina Bertoni – Closer (Portal) (5:20)
Streaming:
Label’s press release:
Invisible Comma – The Sound of Trieste Science + Fiction Festival
This festival has always been rich in connections with the musical scene. However, they have always taken the shape of live events offered in addition to the screenings, or as a parallel focus on one of the festival’s themes, as book presentations and round tables. Thus, the idea of creating a compilation, in physical format, is unprecedented, and is aimed at representing those current trends of Italian underground music showing an affinity – even if only in spirit – with science fiction. It is well known that the two share more than some underlying ideas. And it is impossible to define to what extent one has nourished the other.
Perhaps, it is more correct to say that both possess that cunning ability to penetrate all kinds of imagination, all of our fears and hopes, which every day are inside our heads, ringing a mental bell, to shape new levels of awareness. And most of all, an ability to favour those lateral movements of our thought which may at the beginning feel unsettling and dangerous, pushing us off balance, but which later prove to be essential to allow our imagination the access to less visited areas.
Yesterday’s concerns are the same as today’s. Or maybe even worse. What changes are simply the human beings speaking about them, who refer to their own experience and relationship with the reality surrounding them, a reality which is increasingly sacrificed to the folly of mass consumption and to the rapid obsolescence of technologies. A distant image, buried at the bottom of the sea of history, bounces back towards us and falls in line with an image of an approaching future, a bleak image, which wipes away the transparency of the water.
Enjoy the music.
Notes by Andrea Marutti:
I’d like to extend my most heartfelt thankyous to Loris Zecchin and Fabrizio Garau, curators of the “Invisible Comma” compilation, for inviting me to be part of this great collection. I am always quite more than glad when one of the tracks I created under my Lips Vago alias is offered the chance to escape from the dusty archives where for years and years it has been confined, but this definitely feels like a very special occasion for me.
As an acknowledged passionate reader of Peter Kolosimo‘s books on mystery archaeology since my teens, and an avid tape-trader of B-movies from the 1950s and 1960s during my early twenties and beyond, I always had a strong interest in Science Fiction and I often drew inspiration from these readings and visions when creating my music and ambiences.
“Into the Uncertain“, whose ‘working tile’ is marked as “This Uncertain Feeling” in my notes, is the penultimate Lips Vago track I created before the project fell undefinitely into hiatus back in late 2001. At the time of writing, this track is 23 years old, it was completed on September 12, 2001, the day after the infamous September 11 events that have catapulted us into the dystopian future we are all still living in.
It took me about a week to assemble this piece of music and I regard it as one of the most complex tracks I had the pleasure to work on, at least for my standards. I clearly remember my efforts to fill it with little details that I can still recognise in the mix and appreciate after all these years.
The little nerd in me can’t help to mention the kit list that went into forging the sounds on this track: Roland JD-800 synthesizer, Korg Wavestation A/D synthesizer module, Alesis S4 synthesizer module, Emu Esi-4000 sampler, Alesis HR16 drum machine, Zoom 1201 effect unit, Roland Boss BE-5 multieffect, Yamaha Promix 01 mixer, Cubase VST sequencing software.
(November 2024)
Reviews:
Vito Camarretta, Chain D.L.K., November 2024
The stars have always whispered to humanity, but with “Invisible Comma“, they scream, hum, and pulsate with life. This compilation, curated for the Trieste Science + Fiction Festival, is a bold ode to both the cosmos and the subterranean depths of the Italian avant-garde. Spanning eight tracks, it bridges the divide between inner reflection and outer exploration, like a cosmic odyssey scripted in modular synths, cellos, and haunted echoes.
Opening with “Permacrisis” by Marco Malasomma, the compilation immediately sets its dystopian tone. Inspired by Orwellian dread, Malasomma weaves a tapestry of viola and electronics that feels as if it’s quivering on the brink of collapse. It’s the sound of a world that knows its own fragility but defiantly stands against it – a fitting introduction to this eclectic anthology.
Enter “Possession” by Confrontational, a neon-lit jaunt into retrowave nostalgia. Sardinia’s answer to John Carpenter, Confrontational conjures a cinematic landscape where synths shimmer like heatwaves on dystopian asphalt. It’s equal parts retro-futuristic anthem and haunted hymn, evoking a future that never quite arrived.
Then, “Into the Uncertain” by Lips Vago plunges us into the void. Andrea Marutti, a veteran of the ambient/dark-ambient scene, offers a track that seems to breathe, its textures expanding and contracting like a dying star. It’s deeply atmospheric, evoking visions of alien ruins and forgotten tapestries of sound.
From here, “A Cold Field” by Tristan Da Cunha shifts gears, offering a minimal, isolationist take on post-rock. Delicate guitar lines meander through barren sonic landscapes, accompanied by sparse, echoing percussion. It’s as if Labradford took a detour into a David Lynch fever dream, blending beauty and unease with every note.
Blak Saagan’s “Black Out a New York” feels cinematic in every sense – a krautrock-inflected journey into the chaos of a city extinguished. Inspired by Carl Sagan’s explorations of the cosmos and human frailty, it vibrates with both urgency and a sense of timeless wonder.
The noir-dub stylings of “Night Plotters” by SabaSaba take a Carpenter-esque detour through shadowy streets and dystopian reveries. Andrea Marini and Gabriele Maggiorotto craft a piece that feels simultaneously grounded and otherworldly – a sonic labyrinth that challenges and rewards its listener with every twist.
Chaos Shrine’s “Incidental Dimensions” plunges us into darkness, with sinister dub textures that feel like echoes from an occult ritual. Paul Beauchamp and Andrea Cauduro create a soundscape that’s thick with foreboding, offering a brooding yet strangely hypnotic passage into the unknown.
Finally, Martina Bertoni’s “Closer (Portal)” closes the album with a haunting serenity. An “augmented cellist” with Berlin’s avant-garde flair, Bertoni blends drone, texture, and melody into an emotional crescendo. Her track feels like the gentle gravitational pull of a black hole – a final embrace before the journey ends.
The brilliance of “Invisible Comma” lies not just in its diversity, but in its coherence. Each track contributes to an overarching narrative – a journey through dystopia, nostalgia, exploration, and transcendence. Italy’s long history of sonic innovation, from Morricone to Goblin, finds a contemporary echo here, with these underground artists channeling that legacy into new and uncharted territories.
Ironically, the compilation is titled “Invisible Comma“, but nothing about it feels faint or understated. It’s a bold exclamation mark in the landscape of experimental music, a declaration that Italy’s underground remains a fertile ground for cosmic imagination.
Uwe Schneider, African Paper, October 2024
It is widely known that Italy has some of the most productive communities for experimental music and sound art, and to prove this you don’t even have to go back as far as Luigi Russolo‘s “Rumorarmonio“, just take a look at our pages – and I say this with due modesty out of reverence for the subject. A large area within this has always been the production of film music (who doesn’t know the works from the generation of Morricone, Nicolai, Macchi and Ortolani or the prog-heavy scores of bands like Goblin? Productions that are made especially for media use and are integrated into a specific licence system and are usually not available in regular record stores.
When we talk about the cinematic character of music, despite the imprecision of the term, we usually mean a quality that in some way occupies an intermediate position between actual film music and the aforementioned stock productions – the potential of a composition to accompany moving images and thus fit into their dramaturgy for atmospheric enhancement. With the compilation “Invisible Comma“, whose cover shows a half-dissected human machine, the organisers of the Trieste Science + Fiction Festival, have put together an anthology that presents a wide range of music from Italy suitable for film. The lion’s share tends to be made up of dark productions that seem to be made for exploring mysterious inner and outer worlds.
The collection opens with the track “Permacrisis” by drummer and electro-acoustician Marco Malasomma from Apulia, who goes by his surname. The haunting piece begins with an alarm siren that foreshadows something ominous and soon grows into a looped canon of sirens, under which at some point a similarly ominous drone is added. At some point, the whole thing almost dissolves into a shaky tremolo, and when the sirens return, there is almost something like a reassuring familiarity. The Sardinian project Confrontational goes in a completely different direction with “Possession“, dominated by playful synth loops, distorted vocals and sawing guitar riffs, and quite soon beats that are – quite personally subjective – a little too stolid for me. Without knowing much about this music, I reckon it will appeal to fans of Die Krupps of the ’90s.
With the appropriately titled “Into the Uncertain“, Lips Vago leads us into an uncertain and almost nostalgic scene with light-footed rhythmic noise loops and analogue sounds reminiscent of old computer game music, with a playful lightness running through the track. Behind the name is Andrea Marutti, who has been active in electronic music since the ’90s and whose love of science fiction B-movies from better times and archaeological mysteries shines through here. Things get dark and metallic with “Cold Field” by Tristan Da Cunha. Armed with a guitar, sampler and laptop as well as drums and cymbals, the duo creates a multi-layered world that slowly unfolds and finally progresses to a rich, gliding drone. This atmospheric composition is reminiscent of a dark, wordless radio play and is one of the highlights of the collection.
Also impressive and captivating is producer Blak Saagan, whose “Se ci fosse la luce sarebbe bellissimo” has already been presented here. With the rough synth loops and powerful mid-tempo beats of his “Black Out a New York“, he creates a dystopian world reminiscent of hypnotic soundtracks from the ’80s, when giallo films and other thrillers were already getting on in years and still produced some late gems. With “Night Plotters“, Andrea Marini and Gabriele Maggiorotto alias SabaSaba from Turin combine exciting orchestral sounds with electronic rhythms. What is initially reminiscent of a disturbing silent film scene develops into an atmospheric composition dominated by mid-tempo rock beats and shimmering sounds, which increasingly reveals its spatial depth and electrified face. The feeling of hearing hushed panting and whispering also creeps up on you from time to time.
The American Piedmontese by choice Paul Beauchamp, who has already assisted SabaSaba in the studio, presents a new project of his own with Chaos Shrine and exposes us to a mesmerising intensity with “Incidental Dimensions“. High, ghostly, drunken voices float in space, accompanied by fluttering and rustling details. Subtle percussive rattling resonates in the background without forming a clear beat. Strings and other string playing echo, and at some point a harmonic drone spreads and fills the remaining empty spaces. And as we know, such harmonic aspects are ideally suited to eerie and threatening scenarios. Martina Bertoni concludes with “Closer (Portal)“, a piece that develops from a small, simple melodic cell into a complex movement of drones. Her use of cello radiates melancholy, while shimmering, electrified tweeters add a subliminal dynamic. The track gradually unfolds its tension and finds its tempo in a powerful synth finale. We had already featured the composition on its initial digital release and have little to add to our enthusiasm.
“Invisible Comma” is an impressive collection of mostly dark sounds from various Italian music scenes that reveals a cinematic quality and, above all, a depth rarely found in a collection that must inevitably remain somewhat heterogeneous.