Breath

The album is the first retrospective volume on the artist's electroacoustic music. The Acousmatic Years is where that journey began. Every track in the present release is remastered for a greater dynamic range. Some artist's notes are included.

01 - Holy Cows Don't Graze Here
Original Title: Le Vacche Sacre Non Pascolano Qui (2002)
In this composition, every sound was collected from the Internet and elaborated by the means of sound algorithms. The approach has some connections to the way human beings catch information and rebuild it in a new shape, in order to understand separate and far realities.
I have been interested in the Oriental culture since my teens. In 2001, I came to consider this interest of mine as a way for me to grasp and rebuild information. The piece is a trace of the expression and the analysis of a “found”, unconscious product. It is a metaphorical analysis renewing the meaning of my composition techniques.
In collecting samples from the Internet, I felt as appropriating of identities and memories, which I imagined of people using those sounds before. The continuous deconstruction and reconstruction of the sound, became for me a way to explore those histories.
In the track, a fusion of sounds and identities takes place. Some stages of these mutations are shown, while others are precluded to the listening. I supposed that fusion as a means for me to comprehend those separate and far realities. Since then, I started considering any process of cultural acquisition and mental assimilation in similar way. Due to the chaotic nature of such processes, within which we are caught, understanding implies a change.

02 - Sirens
Original Title: Sirene (2001)
The visual figures, evoked by the sounds as in musique concrète, morph in a free abstraction of electronic elaborations. It is possible to understand the piece as a sonic narrative made up by a sequence of images/ideas.

03 / 05 - Diana and Tuda
Original Title: Diana e la Tuda (2003)
Voice: Ludovica Manzo
I composed the piece for the homonyms theatre work of Luigi Pirandello, directed by Carlo Ferrucci. Singing and bashing chisel become here the metaphor for a confrontation between Diana — the statue on which the sculptor is working at — and Tuda, who is the model for such a statue.

04 - Suspended Identity
Original Title: Identità Sospesa (2000–2004)
The piece is the trace of a past, which is made up by mutations. In here, the sound events are almost hidden. These are fragments of something that cannot be completely defined but still appears.
When I started working on that, the composition was a song for voice and guitar. Since then, I used it as a raw material: each piece derived from the previous one and had a different identity. Interestingly, none really satisfied me. One day, Alessandra Porfidia asked me to compose a music for her new sculpture, whose aesthetics reflected influences of the Japanese “one empty in full and full in empty”. Still, I was attracted by the idea of completing that work. In relation to such an aesthetic, I began to compare my music to the idea I had of myself. I was realising that by continuous doubting, I had forced my ideas to constantly change.
In the music, I inverted the relation between gesture and texture, submerging the first to the thick background. From time to time, sound-gestures emerge to the foreground. These sounds are fragments of a history of mutations, which existed and still it is occurring: myself.

06 - Breath
Original Title: Respiro (2004)
I composed this piece from the single recording of a human breath. Specific frequencies are added to the spectrum for exciting on-site surfaces. In turn, these may surfaces resonate.