italian
-
FREE TIME
Andrea Belfi discusses his latest album, Eternally Frozen, a canon-based composition for percussion, electronics, and brass ensemble. Inspired by a visit to LA’s Museum of Jurassic Technology, Belfi draws upon the story of Deprong Mori, a mythological bat that could use its powers of echolocation to phase through solid matter, before being captured by an American researcher,…
-
Lino Capra Vaccina
Lino Capra Vaccina is one of the greats of Italian minimalism. In the early 1970s he was a founding member of the ethno-jazz group Aktuala, who pioneered a distinctly Mediterranean form of contemporary music more than a decade before industry suits coined the term “World Music.” After his departure, he joined Franco Battiato (with whom he would continue to…
-
Down On Darkened Meetings
Low key yet lyrical melodies balance on the cusp between accessible and weird, at turns mournful and celebratory. Untitled tracks allow the listener to project whatever they’re feeling onto this music. And despite being informed that all sounds come from electric and acoustic guitars, there remains an ambiguity to the sound sources that makes room…
-
Subversive Communication Nine Years After 68
[Bologna, 1977] Semiologist Umberto Eco, professor at the University of Bologna, author of The Open Work and The Absent Structure, was one of the first intellectuals to comment in the press on the emarginati revolt movement. Eco is particularly committed to understanding the new culture of this movement of the unemployed, of students in the…
-
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
This episode features Giuseppe Esposito, a Neapolitan musician who runs the tape label Archivio Diafònico, an operation that mostly documents artists who are based in Napoli. The chaotic and bustling capital of the South of Italy undeservedly gets a bad reputation, and the city has a vibrant cultural scene and rich history that is sorely…
-
Francesco Gregoretti ~ Solid Layers, Deafening Shapes
Many of my favorite artists trained as architects, while many of my favorite composers had their origins in the rhythm section. I can’t help but try to find some commonality in this. Architects must strike a balance between being practical and imaginative, understanding both business and art, responding to real-world limitations and concerns which make…
-
Enrico Coniglio ~ Songs from Ruined Days
Enrico Coniglio is a Venetian sound artist, creating pieces out of washed-out drones and ambient guitar loops while integrating them into field recordings. With a background in urban planning, his work explores the aural identity of place in a very sophisticated, if subjective, manner. His latest work is Songs from Ruined Days, a long form recording that…
-
Liminaria / Interferenze 2022
I spent 23 June – 3 July 2022 in rural southern Italy as artist-in-residence as part of the Liminaria / Interferenze festivals. This page collects the works produced during those residencies. — dopo il diluvio is a binaural soundwalk made for headphones, following a specific route through the town of San Martino Valle Caudina (AV). This soundwalk…
-
Sonic Topographies of the South
Sonic Topographies of the South: Rural Futurity as Resonance and Dissonance One of my earliest sonic memories is of the altar bells at Sunday Mass, which as a child I mistook for a literal manifestation of divine presence. And so, the discovery that this joyous sound was performed by those sneaky altar boys is one…
-
Franco Battiato: all the records and all the songs
In recent years, audiences in the United States have finally been discovering the Italian artist Franco Battiato. Battiato’s reputation has grown in part due to Superior Viaduct re-releasing four of his classic albums from the early 1970s on vinyl there for the first time. But in Italy, Battiato is a massive star beyond comparison. Aspects…
-
Americans in Rome
AMERICANS IN ROME Musica Elettronica Viva’s Trastevere Commune by Valerio Mattioli from Superonda: Storia Segrete della Musica Italiana (2016), pp 182-202 Translated by Joseph Sannicandro Trastevere, as the name suggests, is the Roman neighborhood that is “on the other side of the [river] Tevere”, that is, on the opposite bank from the heart of the…
-
Dropping Out Into Music: The Audience as Orchestra
Dropping Out Into Music: The Audience as Orchestra Edith Schloss The Village Voice (August 7, 1969), Pg. 27. Rome – On the left it said “messieurs” and on the right it said “dames.” It was in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in May. The tall tiled room next to the toilets reverberated to…
Sound Propositions 