A film about bike maker Ezra Caldwell (Fast Boy Cycles), who was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. When the cancer threatens to shatter his love of bikes, Ezra survives by documenting his illness as thoroughly as his craft.

www.thisismadebyhand.com
www.bureauofcommongoods.com
www.fastboycycles.com

Gacougnol returns with his second ‘Readers Selection’ for Fluid Radio. Simply click on the image to find out more…

www.twitter.com/gacougnol

“Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner…?”

Francesca Woodman was an American photographer (April 3, 1958 – January 19, 1981). She was born in Denver, Colorado, but later relocated to study at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. She relocated to New York City in 1979, but her life sadly came to an end on a January day in New York’s Lower East Side, when she committed suicide at the age of 22.

Her suicide drapes a long shadow over her personal works of art, as well as her professional photographic frame, seeping undercurrents of sadness into her art, uncovered in a photograph as a white mist seen through a mirror. One must try to approach her imagery for the image alone, irrespective of her death. Still, her suicide sinks into her photography, penetrating just as deeply into the eye as the imagery itself. The eye-line surrenders to the photograph, and the image cocoons itself completely.

Francesca was born into a family of artists. Her father, George Woodman, was a painter and a photographer, and her mother, Betty, was a sculptor. She loved Italy, and found her strongest artistic influences in the Italian Capital, Rome. She went to Italy with her family every Summer, and spent a year studying in Rome (1977-1978). It was a productive period for Francesca – being fluent in Italian made it easy to meet other artists, and her first small showing was held at the Libreria Maldoror, a bookshop and gallery that specialised in surrealist art.

Her photography comes to life on a negative image. All in all, during her short career, Francesca created as many as 10,000 negatives. Her prints are 8 x 10 inches or smaller, which ‘works to produce an intimate experience between viewer and photograph’. At the heart of her arresting photography lies this sleepy intimacy – an intimacy created through nudity and a close, constricted relationship with her objects. In many of her photographic shots, her body is thoroughly entwined with her surroundings. Every single photograph shines a faded, drained colour, radiating her presence into the present day, despite being taken over thirty years ago.

Reality becomes clouded. Francesca, with subtlety, changes our perceptions, and our unique vision, of reality itself. Her photographs strike a dagger into any kind of lingering comfort zone there may be, sending sensations flickering with unease to new destinations as she works to re-arrange our perceptions. Everything that was once familiar and comforting now feels strange, dislocated out of place. She displayed shy characteristics, hiding the very personal features of the face; eyes that reveal the clearer windows to the soul, and yet she also exposed her body.

She went beyond the pane of understanding and human reason, into a world of surrealism that existed within an intimate cage resembling a frame. Nightmarish images are none the less soft to the receiving eye, a black and white beautiful ballet reciting a thousand traumatic events.

Her photography puts in focus the image of Francesca herself. Occasionally, other young women were present, usually nude or streaked as an indistinct blur, shining a bleak, chrome light on the female body and feminine vulnerability. Her photographs, although surreal, were emotionally revealing, imbued with the unknown, and incredibly open. One repeating feature of Francesca’s work is that of an obscured face and a concealed expression – you don’t need expressions to expose emotion. Her self portrait at thirteen ‘denies her face to the camera’, and in so doing, places a mask over the onlooker. Even at such a young age – as a teenager – her positional and photographic skill was evident, as was her preparation and meticulous pre-planning; it’s visible in every shot, but never in a detracting way.

First Exposures

Youthful and beautiful, Francesca was influenced by gothic and surrealist art. Claustrophobic and cloying, her photographs are poised, posed and potent; they can produce an eerie shudder as she enters the photograph, the visible to the invisible, at one with her eerie environment. Her photographs shimmer with bleak light, a beacon for the afterlife, like a ghost box tuned into a spectral frequency. And her work remains astonishingly mature. Tempting you in, Francesca contrasts the soft, prone flesh of the body with the jagged, uncompromising structures of life that surround us all.

She appears at one with her surroundings, but the set-up and the placement is never cosy – far from it. Instead, her positioning and interaction seems like a constriction or a kind of suffocation, brought on by the body instead of any other paranormal entity. The effect is intentional; through her props, we know something isn’t right, but the solution remains silenced on the tip of Francesca’s hushed finger.

She appears naked in a lot of her photos. Despite shallow claims that she used her photography to show off her young, feminine body, everything you see is for artistic effect. Inserting her body into the photograph ensured that it was her presence within it; it was a true reflection on her artistic style and her personality, rather than a vain attempt at self-promotion or self-indulgence. Her passion for her art couldn’t be more clearly in focus. Her shyness when it came to obscuring a face unraveled when it came to revealing her body. Hers are apparitions that continue to linger long after the lids have closed, and only a true artist could accomplish that. They are spirits trapped, with nowhere to go apart from erasure, and this reflects itself with a suffocating enclosure – her photograph. Although a self-expression of freedom, artistry and creativity, the photographic borders are also a cage. Her 8 x 10 inch prints are an encounter with claustrophobia, staring out of black and white eyes into the art galleries and exhibitions of today – a true kind of exposure, of nudity – for everyone to see.

Francesca’s work isn’t always immediately oppressive, but the muggy air could transform even a colour image into a negative one. Her photography is haunting; not only because of the relationship between herself, her subject and the camera-eye, but there remains the sense of a presence concealed in the photograph itself – something paranormal – pulling you into the shot closer and closer. As you stare into the photograph, secrets fail. You begin to see flickers of Francesca’s character and personality. Among the floorboards and the silent, still chairs lies a struggle to free the body. Even the furniture tries to possess the body, and drag it into oblivion.

Her images, many with only a date and a location, transcend space and only leave a ghosted scent of reality behind. The naming and dating may imply simplicity, so as not to distract the viewer, or to increase the aura within the image without any distraction. Only a scribbled sentence was written underneath – ‘To Be An Angel’, from her Angel series, was one of them. Any reason behind the naming (it may just have been artistic preference) seems secondary. Her world exists both inside and outside a vacant void.

Placing herself in the photograph, Francesca herself often appears as a frightened or cautious young woman (her haunting expression, eye-to-eye, can be clearly seen in her series Polka Dots). Face to face, she crouches timidly in an otherwise abandoned room, cornered by the unseen amid walls that are chalked of decay. Our position is the position of her fear. Plaster hangs against the wall, peeling like strands of dirty hair. Her striking imagery seems to be scraping against the conscious mind as well as the run-down, ruined environment coughing out the ages of dust like breathing apparitions; an interior choked with deterioration.

Ruins could be shrines for the sinister or the sublime, lost inside faded, crumbling stone. Draped behind a white sheet, a figure is blurred – a technique that she used to astounding effect – concealed in obscurity and laced with mystique. It isn’t just symbolic. Objects placed at angles seem to suggest symbols, but the objects may also be the suggested objectification of a woman’s body. A hidden face and the adoration of the naked figure may indicate her thoughts, offering enough of a glimpse to trace a way out of the very photograph and into the mind of the viewer. Francesca’s photography could be disturbing as well as brilliant. Taking in her work is an eerie sight, where what could be the thin, white strands of ectoplasm link from one entity to one mouth. Her body may be blurred, faded and then erased, or suspended between the stages; it’s a shock, because she reveals our own flitting existence on this Earth. Her body is as fragile as the wings of a butterfly, revealing an attraction, adoration and fascination for the figure; one that is susceptible to the elements, and to the decay scraping against the forlorn, torn wallpaper of the skin.

Angels Are Among Us

‘On Being an Angel’ – four words completing a phrase, written underneath one of the photographs taken from her ‘Angel’ series (Rome, 1977). If we look closer, the words uncover her desire for transfiguration, and freedom in the act. It’s also a kind of ascension, made possible through art.

Shrouded in escapism, freedom is a physical desire. Looking up to the Heavens, Francesca has an almost sensual look in her eyes. Her direct gaze into the lens, into the eyes of a stranger, is perhaps a true uncovering; where her nudity is greater than the revealed flesh, sensitively open to reaction – another sign pointing towards vulnerability. In another photograph, her body hangs suspended, just in front of a door and inches closer to the Heavens. Is this her longing for release, for an ascension out of the mortal, physical body?

Yet, the environment around her never reflects the beauty of a sunrise. These are angelic beings lost to less than angelic places. Her often ghostly images – where the truth of the image is either suspended or suppressed entirely – are covered by white sheets of surrealism. The real beauty is that the suggestion comes from our own minds, connected by her suggestive props, poses and positions.

A black veil wisps across her face, one thin arm loose and the other disappearing. She looks unemotional, detached and, for all purposes, erased from the room, her figure vanishing as if trapped between unseen dimensions. Taking a trip towards the sinister, this is a real apparition.

She took many of her photographs wrapped in the roots of trees, where her once-human form changed subtly into branches for arms. She seems to zone in on the concept of resurrection; gazing face-on with mortality as if it was the blank, staring glass of the camera lens. She wasn’t just photographing the surreal; she was enclosed inside her own art, taking the cages of the medium and transforming it into performance art.

Optical Illusions

Phantoms lie inside mirrors, placed centrally and carefully to draw your attention to the clouded presence within.

Her use of long exposure times could reflect traumatic psychological states, where the blurring of the figure meets the blurring psyche of the mind. Throughout the blur, her body is angled, curving as smoothly and as perfectly as the sculpted jars. It is often said that any kind of space, in this case the interior of a house or studio, can ‘absorb’ the emotional currents that are discharged on a day to day basis, seeping into the very walls and repeating traumatic incidents over and over again. This kind of residue invites ghosts and phantoms to haunt a once-frequented area. Francesca seems to seep in with the surroundings, and one of many distressing thoughts, circling like mental phantoms, is that it’s unclear if she’s been taken against her will or not. Held hostage by the space, enwrapped in arms forever.

She vanishes.

Just out of sight, she crouches – maybe these ghosts never left.

Naked, she lies along the banks of a river, beside the roots of an imposing tree. A graveyard is just visible in the background as a sick presence of white light emanates from the heart of the tree. It’s an unhealthy aura that is as spectral as it is beautiful. Caressing the roots, as if she desired, or even craved, to enter nature more fully, Francesca lies down. It may be a kind of sexual suggestion – she leaves your mind to fill in the blanks. Her ghostly, see-through image is let loose, crawling and clambering through a headstone, as if repeating the concept of resurrection. Francesca herself referred to these photographs as ‘ghost pictures’.

Fade To Blank

In her final days, she reportedly suffered from depression, due in part for her supposed failure to attract attention, artistic recognition and success, as well as a relationship that was starting to strain and bearing a smattering of cracks. Her photography is anything but a failure, as the years have proved. Now, over thirty years since her passing, her work continues to receive worldwide critical acclaim – if anything, her work is still gaining in popularity and admiration, highlighting how artistically far ahead she was. Her promise was delivered, despite departing on the cusp of her life, her youthful years, one January day. – Francesca Woodman (1958-1981)

- James Catchpole for Fluid Radio

The Cyber Surfer is back with another great looking selection of ‘under the radar’ digital releases that are well worth investigating…

- Cyber Surfer

“Wood, Winter, Hollow” is the first collaborative album from Seaworthy (Cameron Webb) and Taylor Deupree, drawn from field recordings and instrumental improvisations made during a three-day session in Pound Ridge, New York. The release continues the 12k label’s drift towards more acoustic ‘singer-songwriter’-style instrumentation, with acoustic nylon-string guitar and glockenspiel dominating, though the sparse, reflective mood is characteristically 12k. The guitar is very forward in the mix, with all the scrapes and fret buzzes and occasional bum notes left in, which greatly enhances the sense of intimacy and spontaneity that pervades the record — as with the recent 12k live album “Between”, the music is audibly a document of a moment in time, with the usual sonic tidying and tweaking either convincingly hidden in the mix, or abandoned altogether. The resulting effect is one of ‘being there’, a kind of presence that is still largely staged (the field recordings hushing and crackling in the background weren’t captured at the same time as the guitar, for example), but is nonetheless very tangible.

As hinted at by its title, the album was made during a period of cold and snow, with many of the sounds drawn from sources such as water trickling over ice or the scrunch of frozen leaves. To my mind “Wood, Winter, Hollow” doesn’t evoke an archetypal winter atmosphere quite as strongly as some of Deupree’s solo work, for example. However, if one examines environments less shaped by human activity, and in particular the effects of weather upon such environments, it is clear that they are characterised by a high degree of complexity, diversity, and contingency, in the spectral and temporal qualities of their acoustics as much as in any other way. Webb and Deupree allow this complexity to seep into the very bones of their music through their choice of instruments, the ways in which they are played, and the open approach to production that values the contribution of each little noise, however unintended. In this sense, “Wood, Winter, Hollow” opens up and lets the world and the weather in more powerfully than anything else I’ve heard from either artist. There is still a fine degree of restraint and precision exercised over the final results — the intention, after all, is to make music, not just noises. Yet it seems that the relatively short recording phase and quick production turnaround (Webb’s visit was as recent as this past February) has encouraged a partial relinquishing of control in favour of spontaneity and immediacy, which in turn perhaps reflects the environments where the field recordings were made more faithfully than the most precise and exacting imitation could.

What this record exemplifies, then, is an attitude and a sensibility that is arguably far more central to the work of both artists, and to the general aesthetic of Deupree’s 12k label, than any references to style or genre. It is this attitude and sensibility that recommends the album both to 12k devotees and to listeners who wouldn’t usually be interested in the styles of music the label has traditionally been associated with. Despite the nods towards the singer-songwriter genre in terms of instrumentation, the approach to music-making taken by Webb and Deupree is far more innovative than such references would suggest: rather than seeking to impart a personal message and vision, their wordless ‘singer’ is content to co-exist with the burbling water and cracking ice, allowing his voice to mingle with those of his environment. More than anything else, perhaps, “Wood, Winter, Hollow” is a fine lesson in how to listen to the world.

- Nathan Thomas for Fluid Radio

www.12k.com

Released exclusively through the Spheruleus Bandcamp page, ‘Clearings’ is a collection of 12 previously unreleased works. Each piece was constructed using unused sounds on the artists hard-drive from the six years spent working with experimental music…

“I have seen similar things done before by other artists and I always wondered whether they found it difficult to give an album of otherwise unwanted material a coherent voice. However, once I had decided to look into doing something similar I suddenly felt liberated when gathering these misfits. Each piece reminded me of a particular time in my life; the thoughts, ideas and concepts I’d had when creating them all came flooding back.

I spent a few months editing this material and assigning it an identity based on the ‘sparks’ that had originally inspired me to make it. Most of the titles are cryptic but themes that flit in and out of ‘Clearings’ include: the sea and enormity of the ocean, a longing for a simple rural lifestyle, rainy days indoors, vast woodland areas, crumbling buildings, commuting, striving for and finding stability and even my half-baked idea of making an album about Christmas trees stood in fields, waiting for the big day!

You can expect to hear everything from lo-fi drones, passages of acoustic instruments, field recordings, vinyl and radio static drenched texture, jittery looping harmonics, percussion made from household noises, tape hiss experiments and subtle use of newer beat-driven techniques.

The finished article draws together all of these different techniques I have experimented with over the last six years and it is hoped that somehow in this variation, there lies a strength and togetherness.

I would like to dedicated the opening track ‘For Diego’ to Juan Diego B (1974-2012)”

- Spheruleus

www.spheruleus.bandcamp.com

Heavenly harmonies always attract adoration. Beauty may be entirely subjective (in life, as in music), but it’s easy to become instantly swayed by the pure beauty in harmony. Attraction can mean different things to different people, but the emotional outcomes of appreciation and exhilaration are always present. The female voice is one of the most natural ways to conjure up beauty, a pure, primary element that has been left untouched and unfiltered. No effects are necessarily needed, and nothing, it seems, is as adept at recreating Heaven on Earth as a feathered female vocal. Parisienne Colleen (Cecile Schott) invites you to cast off alongside her, and who could resist the calling.

Her angelic vocals are beauty personified, and her voice is used in such a way that it searches deeply the amazing possibility and potential in fluid, layered harmonies; hers is a singing voice soaked with a balmy coating of electronic reverb, somehow lost and found at the same time, like the swirling vocal rush of a Julianna Barwick, a Julia Holter or, more recently, a White Blush record.

It’s amazing to think that The Weighing of the Heart is the first time Colleen has sung on one of her records. Not only that, but the intention is to push her voice out right away, like that boat onto the sand. In an instant, her vocal presence is imbued wholeheartedly into the music, giving birth to an airy, natural sound.

Typically, when vocals are featured in such a way, the focus falls largely on the atmospheric, an ambient soundscape that continuously develops and floats on the wings of a vocal. Colleen mixes it up by introducing more than a couple of instruments and diluting the synthesizers, until an earthy sound remains; not one that relies upon electronics.

Cast off with ‘Push The Boat Onto The Sand’. Colleen really does push her vocals outwards, her voice dancing as lightly and as radiantly as those footsteps touching the sand. A guitar solo can be heard rising over a smoke-cloudy atmosphere, sailing away over smooth waters; the only realisation is a kind knowing that everything will be fine. Everything will be alright. Soft footsteps tread lightly along the sand, walking under a thin jet of intense light, whipping up a light, dusty breeze of peace as you walk on by.

‘Humming Fields’ draws together dark skies, clouded with rain despite the lighter use of instrumentation, providing the earth and the music with nutrition and hydration for the thirst. At this point, the music is covered in soft grains of soil. Her songs shine with hope; for once, the folk-tinted mood is free of melancholia, and it never pretends to be something it isn’t.

Through tangled vines, her lyrics reflect a short-styled form of poetry; deep, satisfying and leaving a cloud of deep meaning in their wake. Trembling along the string, the plucked notes resound at speed, and open up like promising ripples over a shallow river. As Colleen sings, ‘I love you just the way you are’, her voice could be one of a thousand echoes, creating their own kind of reverb. You can imagine a thousand listeners repeating the lyric of love as a chant, because this is the response you feel when listening to her music.

A couple of songs cross over into the experimental – the layering of vocals, repetitious in their plea to ‘Break Away’. And from this point on, it becomes increasingly apparent that rhythm, and not necessarily harmony, has taken the centre of attraction. Yet, the rhythmic influence can also be found in her harmonies, in her vocal expression and her phrasing, but it’s clearer seen through the entangled vines draped in natural percussion. Adding her sweet harmonies to the rhythmically centred songs makes The Weighing of the Heart ever stronger. Nearer the end, the once-celestial harmonies point the way to rhythm, subsiding into the air as if they were mist-formed (and they very well could be). Despite the prevalence of rhythm, her music never becomes a slave to a rigid, percussive structure.

If you were to delve deeper, it could be said that every note that has ever lived carries the embers of its own rhythm, like a heartbeat. Colleen’s music is attracted to the unification between harmony and rhythm, in a powdered splash of gentle reverb, bathed under a blood red moon.

This music is darkly romantic, as if the embers of rhythm were candles that still swoosh in a cool draught. Beauty is subjective, but I have a feeling you may just fall in love.

- James Catchpole for Fluid radio

www.secondlanguagemusic.com

A huge thanks to Richard for this stunning feature taken from a recent Soundart Radio broadcast…

I was asked by Dan Crossley if I would be interested in presenting a programme about a forthcoming release on Facture by The Seaman and The Tattered Sail (Bill Seaman and Craig Tattersall), and it would have been rude not to oblige!

After speaking with Craig, he got in touch with Bill Seaman, who kindly provided some words to accompany the project. It is to Bill’s credit that he recorded four mini-blogs whilst moving house from North Carolina to New England. To musicians and non-musicians alike, it is fascinating insight into the creative process.

I do hope that it provides an accurate and interesting taster for the full release. Given the time constraints, I had to produce it live and was swapping cds and it was all a bit frantic.

A very big thank you to Craig, as always, Bill and Dan. – Richard Cunliffe

www.fac-ture.co.uk
www.itsjustmusicbaby.tumblr.com
www.soundartradio.org.uk

Anyone that follows the Fluid Radio Twitter account will probably know of Gacougnol. The guy literally lives and breathes drone music and we are constantly impressed by his wide range of musical taste and passion for supporting upcoming artists/record labels. So it is a great pleasure to have him involved in the latest ‘Readers Selection’ guest spot…

www.twitter.com/gacougnol

Simone Pappalardo teaches computer music, electroacoustic, and holds a workshop on improvisation with electroacoustic instruments at the Conservatory Ottorino Respighi in Latina. He began his career creating electroacoustic machines in collaboration with experimental theatre artists. He also creates musical compositions, especially for instruments (electronics or acoustics) that he designs…

You have an academic background, could you tell me how you came to be involved with electronic music and what is your musical background in general. Have you for instance played in hardcore bands when you were a teenager as many of your peers seem to have done or are you classically trained?

I don’t really have an academic background. I only enrolled at the Music Conservatory when I was 26 and even though this was to be a key stage in my musical development I already had a chance to dabble with other musical genres by then, which has been fundamental as well. I used to play in punk and post rock bands when I was in high school and subsequently had my first live experiences at the famous Folk Studio in Rome (one of Italy’s most important venues in terms of folk and avant-garde music) where I got to know Giancarlo Cesaroni when I was still quite young. I was exposed relatively early to different sounds to the prevailing and consolatory music produced for a young audience.

Then came my experience with “underground theatre”, and especially with the Furio Camillo theatre and Butoh Dance company Lios). At the time I played in a duo with Claudio Moneta, who did great music for dance and who is currently a member of Roseluxx together with Cristiano Luciani, Tiziana Lo Conte and Federico Scalas. Working for the theatre, we had the opportunity to rehearse at night after the shows. We were frequently asked to compose music for performances. Electronic music not only allowed us to explore complex timbres but it also meant that we could produce music, which could convey the dramaturgical and “orchestral” intricacy which was key to these productions, at a low cost. It was definitely easier to multiply the layers of timbre digitally.

Furthermore, this way, we could radically reinvent the performance space. Considering the lack of means we had to contend with, the music also often became the only element of set design (which sometimes was also a choice). It was down to the music timbres, together with the lighting and the stage action to modify the audience’s perception of the environment.

I believe I was able to draw so much from that experience and everything that I do today is in a way a continuation of that. The relationship between timbre and space has found a personal solution in the sound installations. The issue of the connection between musical and physical gesture has led me to investigate further my relationship with improvisation. At the same time, I have found a natural outlet for it by building my own electronic instruments where the physical gesture is an integral component.

The Furio Camillo theatre was an incredible lab where we could seek alternative ways of producing music. After that came the Music Conservatory where I got to know the composer Giorgio Nottoli, who was my teacher, and things radically changed in terms of the work methodology and the spaces and venues where one would play. Things became less empirical, more theoretical but also more complex.

There are a number of pioneers in terms of early electronic music in Italy. What do you think was the specific strength of musicians such as Enore Zaffiri, Marino Zuccheri, Teresa Rampazzi, Ferruccio Ascari, Pietro Grossi, and Luigi Nono?

It’s really difficult to give a comprehensive overview on artists who are as important and different as the ones you have mentioned. What I can say is that these musicians have radically transformed, each in their own way, the way we think about music and composition in Italy (as well as abroad) by underlining the strong relationship between timbre, architectural and social space, and scientific research, thus showing how music doesn’t live a vacuum. One considering the installations of Ascari, the computer art of Zaffiri, the experimentations of Zuccheri, but also the works of Nono – who is the “purest” composers amongst the ones you’ve quoted – one cannot just talk about the music, but should also take into consideration the wide and complex social and artistic context which transcends the boundaries of musical syntax. This is perhaps the real strength and the innovative element of these pioneers who have accomplished that process of transformation within the arts that had began at the end of the XIX century and which elevated different and external elements to the same level of importance of compositional parameters such as those of musical notes and intervals. This was, they expanded considerably the musical vocabulary enabling it to express very complex abstractions and feelings, mirroring the complexity of the contemporary.

Your work is mostly based on electromagnetic fields and their interaction with acoustic instruments such as violins and pianos, which you end up giving a Frankenstein makeover. How do you go about developing these “hybrid machines”?

The idea of building instruments comes from the theatre. From that experience I derived a strong interest towards physical gestures. Even sound could be seen as the memory of an action. There is no sound which has not been produced by a gesture. I therefore find it interesting to rethink classical instruments – or to develop new ones – in order to investigate this relationship between physical gesture and sound in different ways, by minimising or maximising it and testing its limits.

Also, an instrument can be modified, or enhanced, in order to make it interact in a significant way with space. A sound, just like a gesture, is always linked to that same context where it acquires coherence. This relationship between sound and context can also be investigated and put to the test. A composition thus conceived triggers a process of experimentation and research on gestures and space, which is to be conducted together with the performers in the same way it happens for a certain type of theatre.

You do a lot in installations, working with Alberto Timossi amongst others, and you frequently play live sets, but there isn’t much in terms of recorded music from you currently available. Is that a deliberate choice? Do you feel more comfortable working in an art environment?

Rather than being a choice, this has proved to be rather difficult for me. As I mentioned I am very interested in the relationship between sound and space, which is something virtually impossible to capture on a recording. Both in my compositions and installations, I try to make a particular space into a parameter of the musical syntax just as it happens with other elements such as rhythm, amplitude, and timbre. It is not that I find working within an art context particularly congenial, it is just that a gallery space can generally be modified in a way that a venue or a music hall can hardly ever be. The question of finding new ways of experiencing art is an old one, even though the answers have been few and far in between. To have a performer on stage in front of an audience is still our preferred choice for a live event. The configuration of a space does determine the way the sound is perceived. I would be impossible, for instance, to imagine a drums set from Eastern Africa in Saint Mark’s cathedral in Venice. All one would hear would be a cacophony of sound without ever being able to isolate a single beat. It was in that cathedral that in the XVI century, that they experimented with the spazialisation of sound giving way to a new immersive musical experience unique to that space with its specific configuration. Instruments, timbres, and musical structures have always had a strong relationship with the space that hosted composers and their audiences.

Today we have the possibility of redesigning completely this relationship, but at the same time we seem to be bound to forms of fruition solidified over the centuries.

You have a number of collaborations on the go. Could you tell me something about your Olympian Gossip project with Tiziana Lo Conte?

Olympian Gossip are the result of years of work with Tiziana. Every time I was creating a new piece or I was working on an installation I would think of introducing Tiziana’s voice. She has a way of using her voice, which I find congenial. It also has to be said that she has a similar background to mine, alternating between the academic and the underground. Her improvisations carry the echoes of the history of contemporary music, with the avant-garde, and the more hardcore undeground experiences all blended into the mix together with a more extended and freer timbre.

She is a natural born performer and has always been honing her skills through different practices. It is difficult to “enclose” her voice and her performance in the constricting framework of a recorded track.

We formed this duo for the sheer pleasure of playing together. Olympian Gossip is an elecotracoustic impro project where we nonetheless set ourselves different rules depending on the specific occasion. There are times when we predetermine the type of material we will be working on, and other times when we work on a specific theme following long periods or research. Having said that, we can also play freely with no restrictions.

You are also currently working with Dario Sanfilippo, Franz Rosati and Andrea Valle on a new collaborative project, which is still in its early stages. What else are you currently working on?

At present this is still a project in the making rather than a live collaboration. Separately we have frequently worked together in different guises. We all held each other in very high esteem, which led us to want to combine our very different experiences, which have nonetheless many points in common. The first stage of this collaboration will be the festival “Le forme del suono” (The Shapes of Sound) held at the Respighi Conservatory in Latina (23-31 May 2013), which I am involved in organising. It will have workshops and installations by Franz Rosati and Andrea Valle as well as a collaborative installation by Dario Sanfilippo and I. As Dario will be away touring, Franz, Andrea and I might do a trio performance.

The Italian electroacoustic scene is quite varied and vibrant. Are there any underexposed artists and musicians you think could benefit from more exposure?

Many names spring to mind. For instance, the impro ensamble “E-cor”, which came into being thanks to Elio Martusciello’s encouragement as teacher at the Conservatory in Latina. Many young and very promising musicians are honing their impro skills here with electroacoustic instruments creating works for a variable number of performers (electronic or otherwise). Another underexposed composer that springs to mind is Paquale Citera, a versatile musician with an academic background who has also used Tiziana’s voice in some of his work.

Also interesting is the Moterlsalieri a space created by Fabio Quaranta, which combines fashion, art and music, and which also stages very interesting live sets. They were the first to allow me the freedom to completely transform a space. In spite of the dire current socio-economical situation in Rome they are persevering in their attempt to offer something new and non institutionalised.

You are originally from the Emilia Romagna region but you were brought up in Piombino. You now live in the Alessandrino district of Rome. Notwithstanding its many problems, Rome has a very active experimental music scene. Do you feel at home there?

Unfortunately yes, I do feel at home here in Rome! Sometimes I’d like to escape, as nothing seems to work and function properly here especially considering that Rome is forever marred in a state of cultural and social crisis, however I am also aware that it has a lot to offer in terms of alternative venues and thanks to the tangible legacy of the historical avant-garde movements within film and theatre. In spite of the fact that Rome is provincial to its core, almost in a vulgar way, it still benefits from a multifaceted truthfulness.

At times, it is almost as if everything seems so much closer at hand here, from film stars to avant-garde painters, but then everything slips out of reach once again and feels so remote. It does feel more difficult to produce art here as this is a city which doesn’t bestow visibility. Rome is certainly far from being a Mittel-European city, however, incredibly as it may seem, experimentation here is very much alive and well. Also, it has to be said, that as a musician, I am lucky enough in that I often travel for work, which puts me in a strange position toward the city I call home. Compared to other cities I often find myself betraying it in favour of more elegant and functional places, but then again, I end up striving for it. I would give up on Rome any day, but I would never change it.

- Words and Film: Gianmarco Del Re
- Photography: Chiara Kurtovic-Nufactory, Simone Pappalardo, Giuseppe Silvi, Pasquale Citera

www.simone-pappalardo.it