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LP
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DSDM 003LP
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Riding the razor's edge between rigorous experimentation, innovation, and tradition, London based, Italian composer, cellist, and electronic performer, Sandro Mussida, joins the Die Schachtel family with Rueben, his third solo LP. Active since the early 2000s, Sandro Mussida worked extensively with Mark Fell, Curl Collective, Lorenzo Senni, Oren Ambarchi, and Alessandra Novaga, among others, as well as a founding member of the interdisciplinary artists' group TQS Collective, before releasing his solo debut, Ventuno Costellazioni Invisibili, on Metrica in 2017 (MTR 001LP), followed by Eeeooosss, released by Soave in 2019 (GRA 005LP). Rueben, like its predecessor, deploys a microtonal vocabulary within a three-instrument sound palette and builds upon Mussida's long-standing investigations of active listening, augmented by a developing practice that challenges aural perceptions of historical, non-equal-tempered tuning systems. The third instalment of Die Schachtel's Decay Music series -- launched to highlight inspired contemporary experimental efforts in the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract music -- Rueben was recorded during 2018 in the church of St.Giusto in Volterra, Italy. Deeply inspired by Italian Renaissance paintings encountered by Mussida during the work's composition, and conceived at the intersection of acoustic and electronic aural fields, in careful response to the space itself, the sounds of electric guitar, bass clarinet, and cello -- treated as minuscule sound atoms, rapidly projected to form structures of evolving densities -- harmoniously enter into dialogue, forming a multi-layered, contemplative sonic landscape, within the interwoven complexity of their own reflections. Across the length of Rueben, bound to the work's inspiration in the visual realm, the interplay between the senses blur, presenting the act of listening as a mirror for the experience and legacies of seeing. In Mussida's hands, sound emerges as a trace or memory suspended in a non-linear conception of time, where imprint, movement, and event, as they relate to place and happening, are perceived by the ear, recalling the Russian theologian Pavel Florenskij's idea of "reverse time", that likens temporal condition activated by experiences with art as similar to that of dreams. Vast in scope and intricate detail, the nine discrete compositions that form Rueben unfold in a series of interconnected, shimmering landscapes of tone and texture, each, through the interplay of their elements, configuring a radically dense rendering of minimalist, ambient music that challenge the perceived boundaries of those historical definitions. An inspired and radically forward-thinking realization of electro-acoustic music. Cover features an original Sumi-e painting by Japanese artist and avant rock drummer Akihide Monna (Bo Ningen). 180 gram marble vinyl; one-time edition of 250.
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LP
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GRA 005LP
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Sandro Mussida presents EEEOOOSSS, music on three tuning systems, for electric guitar, bass clarinet and cello samples. Personnel: Alessandra Novaga - electric guitar (e-bow), tuning: twelve true fifths (*renold I); Edgardo Barlassina - bass clarinet, tuning: hypodorian aulos; Sandro Mussida - cello, tuning: just intonation (*II partials). Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Edition of 300.
"During the last few years, I've found myself more and more attracted to sounds that are somehow connected to slow, intentional musical gestures. This slowing down of the musical gesture makes it possible for me to pause, to observe and listen to the richness, the details and nuances of the timbres. It also reveals the relationships between sounds in space and time. This kind of listening from a closer perspective also amplifies the connection between timbre and frequency making it possible to investigate even the smallest differences in the intervals. EEEOOOSSS is the encounter between three instruments, each one tuned according to a different tuning system. This meeting was conceived and designed over a period of years but only once took place in the Church of S. Giusto, Volterra, Italy, during the night of the 12th of August, 2018, in the nave, the transepts and the choir. Each of the three temperaments embodies specific characteristics, amplified by the instrument assigned to play it. The dark (almost pure and 'spaceless') tone produced by the e-bow on the strings of the guitar gives voice to the clear tones of the Pythagorean Tuning. The air resonating into the clarinet produces the frequencies of a system derived from the tuning of the ancient Greek flute. As a conclusion, I recorded on the cello one of the scales obtained from the exact relations observed in the partial harmonics of the second octave. Each of these three sounds possesses, in fact, a very different balance between inharmonic and harmonic qualities, from the almost pure sound of the e-bowed electric guitar to that of the most inharmonic, horse-hair bowed cello. Thus, electric guitar, clarinet, and cello are treated as raw material, modeled in their form (primarily through filters and envelope constraints), but without changing their individual distinctive timbral character. The real shaping factor, is, in fact, the architectural space, which added multiple reflections to these materials during the live session, amplifying asymmetric partials, dilating some of the frequencies and interweaving these three scale systems one into the other. Temporarily structured into the domain of software, the gestures acted upon by these sounds are complete in itself. Repetition is illusory, it appears only on the surface. These three meditations are also an occasion to investigate the boundaries between the abstract dimension of electronic music and the living body of a concert." Sandro Mussida Firenze, April 5, 2019
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LP
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MTR 001LP
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The briefest encounter with Sandro Mussida's latest release, Ventuno Costellazioni Invisibili, leaves the ear wondering why its creator is not more well known. It is a stunningly beautiful work. Mussida is an Italian born, London-based composer and cellist, who also works within the field of electronics. Over the years, he has performed and written extensively within orchestra, chamber, and solo instrumental contexts, as well as working with Oren Ambarchi and Mark Fell. His composition In Memoria also notably graced the first side of Alessandra Novaga's brilliant Movimenti Lunari, released by Blume in 2016 (BLUME 004LP). Mussida's work centers around the consequences of compositional choices on musical matter, and questions surrounding the identity of musical languages and traditions; a bubbling conceptualism in sound, which has brought Ventuno Costellazioni Invisibili into the world. Ventuno Costellazioni Invisibili, a composition for violin, flute, clarinet, electric guitar, piano, percussion, and computers, was realized by an ensemble made up of Enrico Gabrielli, Yoko Morimyo, Susanne Satz, Alessandra Novaga, Giulio Patara, Sebastiano De Gennaro, Giovanni Isgrò, and Mussida, during the spring of 2015. Presented in two distinct realizations on each side of the LP, it is a work defined meditative depth and space, built from a focus on transfiguration of perceptual time -- pitches played at different speeds, musical cells generated by the rotation of triangular figures distributed in time and space. The result is a sonic world of startling intricacy and beauty -- one marked by the same openness, experimentation, and elegant restraint, which has long been the hallmark of the Italian sonic avant-garde. It is a near perfect image of minimalist classical music blowing off the dust, shedding the past, diving toward countless optimistic possibilities of what it may become. It's rippling sonorities, the inheritors of the ground once sketched by Franco Battiato and Giusto Pio, taking a radical step into the unknown. One of the most elegant and beautiful albums of 2017, made all that much more thrilling by the diversity and possibility, presented by the differences between its two sides. Artwork by Mark Fell; Includes a digital binaural download which slowly rotates through the piece, two visual works by visual artist Rebecca Salvadori, and an original print of the score on transparent sheets of acetate paper; Edition of 300 (numbered).
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