Corrado Maria De Santis (Midira Records, Lost Tribe Sound) is an Italian guitarist and sound artist, who merges improvised guitar with computer-generated sounds, shaping ambient drones and subtle glitch textures. The album 'City of Tethers' is inspired by a passage from Italo Calvino’s 'Invisible Cities', particularly the description of the city of Ottavia. This city is suspended over an abyss, held up by a net that its inhabitants know will eventually give way. “Suspended over the void, the lives of Ottavia’s inhabitants are less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will not last,” Calvino writes. The image of Ottavia has become a powerful symbol of fragility and interconnection. The suspended city evokes the delicate balance between human relationships, societal structures, and environmental instability, offering a striking metaphor for the precariousness of modern life.

In 'City of Tethers', these ideas are mirrored in expansive, layered soundscapes that explore the fragility of the systems we rely on. The album captures a sense of precariousness and interconnectedness, evoking images of complex, unstable balance—much like Ottavia, a city suspended between two mountains, dependent on a fragile aerial web.

The above text can be found on the artist's Bandcamp site, but we have to begin somewhere. This is another ambient drone album, somewhat similar to label-mate Alessandro Batbanera's latest offering, but different, of course in its style and execution. There are only 5 tracks with a total time of about 40 minutes. Title track "City of Tethers" is largely a dark drone piece with a slight noise component. "Entangled Uncertainties" has some Foley shuffling/scraping sound in the beginning ushering in a two-chord drone loop that seems to be constantly expanding, fostering unease as it does. Heading down into "The Ravine," alarm-like metallic ringing is the first sound to emerge. It blends into a complex, layered dark drone that picks up intensity as it moves forward. Ah, this must be what's underneath the 'City Of Tethers' in the title. (Don't look down; you might get vertigo and fall in!) The title, "Dusk's Embrace" seems simple enough, but the drones employed on this one are not. At first pulsing, then supplemented by synth strings, layer upon layer they emerge out of the darkness, as the night enfolds you. It gradually becomes all-encompassing until it eventually subsides into drizzle. The Foley effects (unidentifiable sounds) are more present at the beginning of "Floatin' on the Edge" than anywhere else on the album. Over a droney background and a mournful, gloomy synth melody you get the impression of some clandestine activity taking place that could be the prelude to the eve of destruction. The track's increasing intensity heralds apprehension and trepidation to nearly the breaking point. It has the feeling of increased velocity in motion that is mind-blowing. But of course, it has to end somewhere, and ends quite similarly as where it began. WOW! An intense album that does not hold back in dark ambience. I didn't really get "the suspended city" theme out of what I heard, but I sure did like the album, and most dark ambient lovers should as well. CD is limited to 100 copies.