Claudio Rocchetti — The Carpenter
Claudio Rocchetti uses other instruments/sound sources and heavy studio processing far more often than Galbraith, making for a much more unpredictable sound. Though he is often classified as noise, for this record he was evidently most interested in pursuing instrumental sounds and there is no harshness. He shows a lot of inspiration from classical music, especially the Romantic melodicism that is his heritage and 20th century avant garde like Schoenberg and Boulez. The eerie sound of a soprano sustaining and wavering notes as if making lonely incantations in a large empty space; harsh, pointillistic, atonal piano occasionally interrupting oppressive silence - tributes to the surrealist and surrealist traditions. During its most modern classical moments ("Anna", "Numbers") it sounds just like something that could be on John Zorn's Tzadik label, and sometimes almost like a vintage Nurse With Wound record (Homotopy to Marie, Spiral Insana), but never close to as emotionally alienating or unlistenable as any of that music. "The Carpenter" is too active to be called 'ambient', but seems to maintain an ambient style of movement.
The sound here is lo-fi, rough... but sounds more like a stylistic choice rather than the actual result of lack of resources. Rocchetti has a penchant for taking noises that most producers would edit out of a mix, sounds that reveal the methods and movements of those in the studio - amplifier hiss, room noise, the quiet blowing of an air conditioner - amplifying them, and presenting them front and centre, as their own texture. This soft fuzz is very 'warm', and sometimes silvery, shimmering and mysterious. Always pleasing to the ear. The album is very intimate and emotionally honest. The loud artifacts in the recordings sometimes give the listener a sense of the sanctuary of the creator of this very individual music. Rocchetti thus never lets our attention completely leave ordinary, every day life, either with the music or with the album packaging, which pictures only a large transport truck and its driver, who could be Rocchetti himself. Much of the time we do enjoy a mid paced float down dreamy strings of images. The tracks seamlessly blend, and the album becomes a story that retains intense immediacy through quite concise track lengths averaging around 3 minutes, strange for an album where the playing is deathly slow (he often pauses for seconds between chords). Stranger still no track feels cut short or incomplete.
The cheap guitar tone is distinctly rough in an indie grunge rock style, which gives the sophisticated compositions just the rawness they need to be intermittently heartbreaking. "Northern Exposure" is an absolutely wonderful piece of playing. Complex emotion I can hardly describe... quiet, melancholy, thoughtful, mature. Like a moment of much needed reverie that proves too weak to bring peace. The longest track "Mendelsshon" is the most like Galbraith of the tracks, melting into a warm wall of distortion and energy at the end. Final track "I Came Over the Snow" uses a tired, dry, creaking old cello to paint a mournful sonic portrait of an old attic. It's no wonder the Throbbing Gristle song of similar sounds was called "Weeping".
If you're one of those who likes the aesthetics and foreward thinking qualities of avant garde music but often finds it abrasive, painful, or tedious to actually listen to, this album presents a great middle ground. If you come from the other side of the camp, and you've tried to get into rougher DIY music - indie guitar experimentalists like Galbraith or noise music like Merzbow but found it too amateurish and lacking in musicality or identiable structure this album is for you. It's short but its the kind of album you listen to over and over. Great stuff. I'm going to be looking into his extensive backcatalogue