A Closer Listen
These Dinzu tapes may be sold out, but they are still worth your time: subtle electronics, minimal formal constructions, and attentive material transformations from three of Italy’s most interesting musicians. As a small run tape label, Dinzu also gives these artists a chance to stretch out into new territories they may not yet commit to on higher profile releases. If you have enjoyed their previous work, you won’t be disappointed, but you may very well be surprised, as each tape pursues new strategies and aesthetic concepts.
Fabio Perletta ~ Hesitant
Much of Fabio Perletta’s previous work (released on Line and Farmacia901) has explicitly foregrounded his interest in Japanese aesthetics, even utilizing field-recordings made while traveling in Japan. Hesitant instead found inspiration from a meeting with steve roden in his Pasadena home. While Perletta was based in Los Angeles for a residency organized by VOLUME in June of 2017 (the culminating performance of which was released by Dragon’s Eye in 2018), he encountered roden at a point in which he had jettisoned the gear he had used for decades, adopting a modular synth rig in order to de-familiarize his creative approach and avoid stagnant repetition. It’s not at all a surprise to find roden’s approach resonating with Perletta, but perhaps roden’s openness to failure and risk freed Perletta from any anxiety concerning this material. He draws on an archive of sound sources he had prepared for various events, but rather than force them into an overwrought configuration, Hesistant‘s 16 short tracks form “an attempt to present sound as it is, not attached to anything but itself, yet far away from being a document or a representation of something.” There is much silence in each track, with often quite loud staccato bursts of activity, the result being a time-based exploration of negative space. Minimal and hypnotic, with the attention to subtle detail we’ve come to expect from one of Italy’s premiere purveyors of microsound.
Giovanni Lami & Glauco Salvo ~ Ife
Giovanni Lami’s work has been well documented by this site over the years, but Glauco Salvo’s solo work has been limited to a short yet engrossing 2016 LP. (You can read my review here.) It’s a pleasure to hear the two team up for this tape, as the result is quite removed from either of their previous efforts. While Lami deploys the tools of his Hysteresis series (a Nagra reel-to-reel, various microphones, small objects), the addition of an Octatrack into this set up might account for the more rhythmic feel of Ife. Salvo’s banjo, which was his primary instrument on 5 Haiku, is no where to be found, however he still creatively deploys a system of speakers, connected to various tape recorders. One might expect such tools to generate abstract and noisy results, but Ife is surprisingly accessible and pleasant, showing the creative range of the artists. The pair seem to work in concert, the results being consonant without relying on traditional melody or structure. While Lami’s compositions have tended to let their form flow from the specificity of his chosen media, Ife is a nice reminder that its not what tools you have but what you do with them.
Thu May 09 00:01:43 GMT 2019