Even though this collaborative release by a strong cast of musicians coming from different stylistical fields, recorded in two different sessions in Sardinia (in TiConZero studio, with the only exception of the second track, recorded live at Signal festival in Cagliari) two years ago, landed on my desk a little bit behind schedule, I'm still in time to introduce it to our beloved readers. This ensemble, made up of Simon Balestrazzi (besides electronics, he cares the preparation of a toy psaltery), Alessandro Olla (label manager of TiConZero, which started as a cultural association aimed at the renewal of musical language through innovative compositional and performative techniques before being a label), Ikue Mori (Japanese talented drummer, which entered in the history of music alongside Arto Lindsay and Tom Wright, the line up of the seminal No Wave band DNA, which coined a number of valuable tracks of that short-lived but important artistic scene, who's dabbling in sonic researches on laptop and drum machines at the moment), Sylvie Courvoiser (skillful Swiss pianist and composer, who collaborated with a plenty of great musicians such as John Zorn, Erik Friedlander, Mark Feldman, Yusef Lateef, Butch Morris, Tom Rainey and many others) and, last but not least, Maja S.K.Ratkje (Norwegian electronic, but above all vocal performer, whose funny vocal moulding is one of the pivotal element for the outcome of this "Treasure Hunt"), sounds like the overlapping of different stylistical maps, where each sonic scout's report converge to one game, whose aim is not really the finding of some trasure, but a metaphorical and somewhat ironic and foolish representation of the dramatic plot of contemporary man and its hectic desire for fulfillment of material needs, when it's too close to forlorn treasure hunts, so that you can imagine this odissey of the mind treads paths that Sylvie's piano retraces with heavy tumbles like in "Tokyo Map" where other elements sounds like squelched while they swirl, primes and emphasizes emotional bombs such as in "So Sorry", whereas the initial tension turns into ghastly peals (wonderfully evoked by Maja), paralyzing melodies and noisy electric storms, becomes a scenic element whereas field recordings or electronics dominate the sonic space such as in "So It Falls", "Anywhere Else" (significantly placed at the end of album, where field recordings which features some children's rowdy yelling, a solitary whistling getting over some confusing crowd's noise and other sonic clues look like marking a sort of blurred arriving point) or "Solanas", or coalesces with other elements of the ensemble such as in "Alive", where the pianist's touches sound like driving any emotional transmutation, wonderfully highlighted by Maja's throat - her vocal malleability as well as some weird or offbeat gimmicks (being my favorite ones those in "So Sorry", where she effects her voice in devilish delays, peeps and suppressed shouts, and in "Alive", where you can imagine her while turning into a gargling mermaid!) are really astonishing! -. The rallying point of the various geographical and emotional provenances has been well depicted by Multiforme's design which included the reproduction of La Carte du Tendre (Map of Tendre), an allegorical map of an imaginary land called Tendre related to the virtous path towards love, which was produced by a number of different authors, just like this protean "Treasure Hunt".

Instead of older and bolder I've become older and slower, shame on me, infact I received this work a while ago, right after I've seen this guy playing live before and together with Manuel Mota. The only thing I can say is that in the meanwhile I've been listening to this collection of guitar works repeatedly and considering who many solo recordings I've stumbled into during the last decade the fact itself would help you to figure out this one can't be filed in the "hell boring" category. More than far from boredom, this young guitarist has assembled a series of compositions and improvisations that without indulging in technics and in self complacency brought in some fresh inspiration. M Tabe style, despite his young age is quite mature, hey if you're into Derek Bailey and if you think this' another petty clone of that improvisational hero you're wrong, the style of this italian musician is more classic guitar oriented. These guitar works are soft, warm and quiet...another possible definition could be meditative, whatever this may suggest. The fact is despite its asperity this release has an all-italian taste for melody, don't think we're dealing with some napolitan oriented guitar or whatever, but I dare you to say the music has no mediterranean aftertaste.

This another chapter of the personal saga started a while ago by Matteo Uggeri, but stylistically this work brings the italian musician in what I think is his favorite musical habitat: a nowhere land where melancholy ties the knot with field recordings and melody. Melancholy could be the subtitle of the whole recording, infact Giannico (you probably know for some interesting solo releases) went for some minimal piano playing perfectly arranged by some more than inspired interventions by Luca Mauri (I/O, Luminance Ratio) and by some elegant cello harmonies by Andrea Serrapiglio (Carla Bozulich, Paramount Style). The high emotional impact and the overdose of melody of the cd makes me wonder if instead of ambient music or field recordings, we're simply in front of a minimalist, quasi pop, cinematic series of compositions. Do you really think I'm just exaggerating? So tell me if some of these litanies wouldn't be suitable for some romantic movie? In a way we've something that brings forth that language that some of these post-post-post meets camera music combos on Constellation have been recording during the last ten years and in my book that means elegance plus quality. This' one of those releases so mellow and so catchy that could be dug by a big range of listeners, not exactly a sunny release, I can't say why but it makes me think to autumn's leaves and to the end of the summer. Can you remember that Tears for Fears' line that says "Advice for the young at heart soon we will be older", it kept buzzing into my head for the whole length of the recording.

Some years ago I've been introduced to the music of Tiziano Milani thanks to the fact in the wonderful homage to Alvin Lucier, Claudio Parodi put out on Extreme records, the musical fragment used as sound source was sampled from Milani. From then on, this italian electronic composer has collected several works under his belt and the most of them have been released on Setola di Maiale (an experimental, avant jazz, uncenventional music label I can't but suggest to taste). Funny, but the title itself could suggest one of the labels suitable for a kind of recording like that, infact due to the compositions and for the amount of concrete-electronic sounds used, it brought to my mind some of the most intense and intriguing composers on Touch label. The framework is a classy collage-patchwork of music performed by several jazzy, classic, contemporary musicians, infact the line up of this recording includes: Koji Nishio on piano, Hiromi Makaino on electronic percussion and rhythms, Lars Musiikki on double bass and guitar, Cristian Corsi on Tenor sax and Lynn Westemberg on viola. After having listened to several of his releases I can say Tiziano Milani's style is clearly distinguishable, infact his magmatic-nightly soup has its own identity. Differently from his previous recordings, Touch has a more contemporary heart and some of the instruments tend to surface from the collage with their own characteristic sounds above all the piano and that's what may confer a conservatory aura to the whole work. An interesting composer/laptop musician with an identity.

"If two quantum channels each have a transmission capacity of zero, they may still have a nonzero capacity when used together". Such a scientific observation, taken from an article issued on scientific web-zine PHYSorg about a study about so-called superactivation which is going to pave way for new interesting developments in communication sciences and schematized in the diagram used as a cover, emphasize the concept at the basis of this release by Lucio Capece, Berlin-based Argentinean musician having a fad for tone-colour sonic experiments and prepared instruments as well as for music with no underlying narration (zero premises, zero lyrics, zero plots, zero praecepts don't imply something should be considered nonsensical). After the entrancing opening track "Some move upward uncertainly", dedicated to Harley Gaber (our collaborator Steve Mecca recently spoke about him while reviewing "In Memoriam 22010", issued two weeks before his suicide) where he just plays the Indian Sruti box, a sort of harmonium whose ascending and hypnotic sound is getting quite popular between Western musicians, listeners can appreciate Capece's skills in preparing instrument since the following title track where he extracts some nice effects from his soprano saxophone after preparation with different objects, which could persuade some saxophone players to look for hidden pop-corn machines or little metal shredder inside your saxophone, whilein the three parts of "Inside the outside", it seems that Lucio's focused on breath, which has been musically observed and overstressed not only for its wide performative range relkated to time stretching (like in the first part, where there's a wise alternation of silence in between chords before he switch ring modulator on), but it seems he's also interested in catching snapshots of his elemental monads, so that cardboard tubes he uses for the recording of the second and third (as well as my favorite one) part could be thought as a musical surrogate of a tubular particle accelerator. In this release, he also included a track, "Spectrum of One", inspired by the 50th anniversary of the first photograph of our planet taken from the deep space, based just on single sine waves, which looks like transmissionary signals, launched over the cosmic void.