Sammartano – ‘Rompighiaccio Destiny’ C10 single-sided
“Rompighiaccio Destiny” is an auto generated composition resulted by the random interactions of two different tape recorders left to play and mixed without any external intervention except for some subtile variations of equalization, pitch and modulation through a delay used in effect send. “We have an increasing desire in any case to get firm ground under our feet. The floe has been a good friend to us, but it is reaching the end of its journey, and it is liable at any time now to break up and fling us into the unplumbed sea.” text from SOUTH, the story of Shackleton’s last expedition 1914-17: chapter III, Escape from the ice. Gaspare Sammartano is an Italian underground musician, producer and sound maker. His solo work is focused on gathering and manipulation of tapes and reflecting on the evolution of modern sampling techniques. He is also part of the Canti Magnetici label team. Limited edition of 80.
Videobasic – ‘To our good friends in the Western Alps’ C34
In 2016 Videobasic spent some days making music in a cabin in the North branch of Canti Magnetici (Western Alps). After these days they recorded this new work during a performance at the historical subversive Radio Black Out, based in Turin. A new stoned psychoacoustic journey based on tape loops manipolations and croaking homemade minimal electronics. Michele Mazzani is one of the most “pure” representative of the Italian underground music scene. In the strangest places you can image as show locations (bivouacs lost in the mountains, crumbling houses, garbage dumps) he organizes live sets that are an unmissable cult for the few people who follow him. His legendary DJ sets played only with tapes recovered in charitable organizations run by the Church is also a must. He lives in an old Romagna-style farmhouse where he frequently organizes shows, festivals and happenings. The farmhouse is also Lonktaar headquarter, his label, which now counts more than thirty releases, ranging from battered psychedelic and rotten noise to Indian travel sound reports. Gabriele Gotini is a master in the art of circuit bending and tape loops. Besides playing in Videobasic and other more or less extemporaneous projects, he runs the music project: Trashsound. Limited edition of 50.
Luigi Monteanni – ‘Om Telolet Om’ C12 single-sided
“Om telolet om” is a composition made out of small and medium audio cut-ups and samples taken from various youtube videos compilations regarding a specific theme named after these words. “Om telolet om” refers to a meme, and to a popular internet subculture, originally developed in Indonesia and that successively spread through other countries. The meme consists in showing a sign (usually a simple handwritten piece of paper) on which the aforementioned phrase, that literally means “Uncle honk uncle”, is written. In doing that, the kids try to get the attention of the bus drivers of several famous Indonesian bus companies, trying to make them honk. The joke is based on the fact that those busses all have customized honks which allow them to produce weird sequences of sounds that range from silly and very recognizable westerns melodies to pure 8-bit raving madness. The sequences and the honks, although not unique and similar to the ones that can be found for example in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, remind at a time of traditional reed and string instruments (tarompet, rebab) and percussions of the Indonesian tradition while being only simple successions of synthesized sounds. While the deep reasons of this whole subculture remain partially unknown up til now, it is true that this is a movement that has its own consistence, resulting in unprofessional street parades and both bus and bus drivers meetings (which sounds are also present in the track). “Om telolet om” is therefore a fake series of field recordings in the double sense of the non-autenticity of the recording phases (which anyway takes in account the online birth and life of the phenomenon) and of the choice of the subject, trying at the same time to give a playful sight on sound culture, subculture, field
recordings and their contemporary developments. Compiled and assembled by Luigi Monteanni. Luigi Monteanni is one of the founders of Artetetra collective and already component of musical projects devoted to the ambiguous mix between exoticism and the exotic and between fake cultural appropriation and authentic cultural invention. Limited edition of 80
Michael Bonaventure – ‘Darenth’ C50
“I have been endlessly busy playing and creating in the sonic universe that is the organ since childhood. I love this instrument because of its kaleidoscopic tonal potential and limitless capacity to sustain sound – qualities that are exploited very fully in the music you are going to hear in this album. DARENTH is a massive meditation, a cycle of three tone poems composed almost entirely of drones, toneclusters and repetitive figurations (‘loops’). I have used these elements to establish broad and sometimes very dense harmonic fields of sound that are given inner animation by means of subtle shifts in timbre, density and dynamics. From time to time, some kind of tonal or timbral ‘anomaly’ will occur, often becoming regular and insistent, increasing in intensity and importance until the entire sound picture has been transformed into something new. There is a tonal centre in this music, which you will recognise as a sort of murky and mysterious deep F-minor drone. The music starts here and ends here, and this tonal base is variously recalled, suggested and returned to many times throughout the cycle. My way of composing tends to be very intuitive and, more often than not, springs from improvisation. And I find landscapes (of all kinds) particularly inspiring. Darenth is an area in north west Kent, England, not far from where I used to live in south east London. I visited this area many times, drawn there for some reason by the name itself as well as by the natural beauty, occasional stillness, horizontality and colour of the landscapes, not to mention by the many anomalous and unexplained things that one finds incidentally while exploring…All of these things somehow got me inspired to start an improvisation that led eventually to the formal creation of this work”. Michael Bonaventure, October 2017. Recorded in All Saints Church, Blackheath, London, November/December 2013. Recordings edited, mixed and mastered by Michael Bonaventure Michael Bonaventure (1962, Scotland) is a composer, concertizing organist, promoter of new and experimental music based in Edinburgh and Amsterdam. His sonic universe is heavily inspired by church liturgy and ritual, imaginary worlds, astronomical and supernatural phenomena; these influences are particularly evident in his many electronic, electro-acoustic, organ and choral works. Together with Huw Morgan and Lauren Redhead he is a member of the collective Automatronic, formed in 2013 to promote new music for organ and electronics. He is also organist of the Barclay Viewforth Church in Edinburgh. As an interpreter of new music, he has worked with a huge number of composers internationally, concertized throughout the UK, Europe & USA, on BBC Radio 3, premiered over 100 new works and made numerous CDs; these include four volumes of Contemporary British Organ Music on the sfz label, and the later organ cycles of Olivier Messiaen for Delphian Records. Limited edition of 80.