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ANGELICA 057CD
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Francesco Serra (Cagliari, 1980) is a self-taught guitarist living and working in Bologna. His research focuses on identifying performance practices aimed at extending the timbre qualities of the guitar and emphasizing the evocative potential of sound. Throughout his musical journey, particularly in the three albums released between 2008 and 2019 under his solo project Trees of Mint (Micro Meadow, Trees of Mint, and NW, released by Here I Stay and Trovarobato Parade), he has progressively deconstructed the song form through sound experimentation, making the physical phenomenon of sound and its interactions with the performance space the focus of his exploration. His previous album, Guest Room (i dischi di angelica, 2022), born of a residency project promoted by AngelicA/Centro di Ricerca Musicale, was actually structured as a form of dialogue between the signals generated by the minimal electro acoustic setup prepared by the musician (electric guitar, two amplifiers, three snare drums, and loop machine) and the physical and emotional responses of the unique sound architecture of Teatro San Leonardo (a former three-nave church) that hosted him for a month during the pandemic. Personal, his new release for the Angelica label, continues the musician's "reductionist" and abstract approach with an even greater essential rigor. Here the initial setup is acoustic: a sound flow beginning with sparse, exploratory phrases of acoustic guitar that, after a temporary completeness found in movement three, starts falling apart in the encounter with the resonances of a drum snare in movement four, eventually dissolving into a completely different "soundscape" (Sardinia, Serra's birthplace): a long field recording of distant night echoes, on which the guitar returns only at the end, now extended in the drone of the e-bow.
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ANGELICA 048CD
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Francesco Serra is an Italian guitarist and sound explorer. His music research focuses on performance practices aimed at expanding the timbre qualities of the electric guitar, as well as the evocative potential of sound in relationship with space and image. In 2012, at the time of his first album, Serra was often compared with musicians such as John Fahey, Loren Connors, and Alan Licht, while this new work entitled Guest Room appears more as a "reductionist", abstract journey comparable in its rigor to the work of Alvin Lucier or Phill Niblock. Starting from a minimal electroacoustic setup (electric guitar, two amplifiers, three snare-drums, a loop machine), this work is the result of his residency at the Angelica | Centro di Ricerca Musicale -- Teatro San Leonardo in Bologna during the 2021 lockdown. A work born out of the intent to catch the acoustic identity of this peculiar space (the theater is a former church, originally part of a convent). Seven microphones positioned under the vault recorded the sound enriched by the refraction on the surrounding surfaces. In the span of a month, it was possible to fully document the signs of a physical presence without leaving out any of the accidental acoustic events that took place during the performance. Entirely performed in real time and without overdubbing, Guest Room is a work of austere fascination, which confirms Francesco Serra as a musician-researcher of both rigorous poetics, and charming identity.
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