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Valerio Tricoli - Vixit [Second Sleep - 2016]

This is Italian Valerio Tricoli's first record since his monumental Miseri Lares on PAN in 2014. That double LP cemented Tricoli as one of Europe's premier experimental electronic musicians specialising in classic techniques of musique concrete brought up-to-date with a dark modern sensibility.

Vixit features two side length tracks exploring an evolving sound world of manipulated tape, field recordings and studio wizardry. The first side signals itself as a tribute to that eternally present Futurist Luigi Russolo, whose notorious concerts of Intonarumori have been claimed as antecedents by legions of experimental artists over the years. Tricoli's La Solidità de la Nebbia (The solidity of fog) named after an oil painting by Russolo doesn't as you might expect take its inspiration from the clanking Intonarumori orchestra. The piece is a far more subtle exploration involving treated field recordings and ghostly use of tape effects. As on Miseri Lares Tricoli shows himself first and foremost to be a master of atmosphere as the piece shifts from one composed texture to another. Sounds like a crackling fire give way to distant urban noises and children playing; some animals emerge briefly before falling back beneath layers of stretched tape. The textural quality of the sound at his disposal are utilised here to the full as half-heard voices and other events rise and fall, appropriately just like shapes in a fog.

The techniques of classic tape manipulation pioneered by musique concrete artists like Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and John Cage are now easily deployed by artists working with digital technology. Uncanny acousmatic sounds and characteristic distortions are often found peppering the work of dark ambient and experimental artists. It is far rarer however to find a musician proficient in the genuine art of these techniques who also has an ear for somewhat dark and strange atmospheres.

The second piece on Vixit is the curiously titled Di Vaga Crepa, Di Gelido Futuro which like the first starts slowly building up simple tones and other small sounds. Tricoli likes to use a number of different layers of small often quiet sounds with differing degrees of reverb, echo and other dynamic effects creating a complex sense of depth. The overall result is this otherworldly mix of texture and tone which while never reaching the level of melody or of raw noise flickers around the borders of both. By its conclusion the record has taken a turn towards more blurred droning textures as if some undead brass band were being channelled from the beyond and stretched across the stereo field. Tricoli's concrete music could not be further from the stale academism of its stereotype.

Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5

Duncan Simpson
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