Synesthesia Recordings

SODAPOP (2008)

U.S.O. PROJECT – INHARMONICITY

Sometimes there are cds that take a little longer than others to be listened to, and sometimes you have to stick a memo on your face to do so. This introduction is perhaps not appropriate for InharmoniCity, but be sure that this is not stuff for those who listen to “cocktail” or “incidental/background” electronic music (with all due respect to the category and its designers…), at the same time it is not even a demanding Stockhausen-like work, which you wouldn’t even try to face without a good concentration, let’s say that in a way this work is somewhat halfway between academic electronic music and certain types of “soundtracking” from the last ten years. Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi are clearly interested in digital music and electroacoustic improvisation, and this in fact is what they offer. They remembered to me softer materials, like Pateras, some things of Kim Cascone, the and/OAR stuff and so forth. In this disc – its cover (for some reason that escapes me) reminds me of the movie Vesna Va Veloce - the three long suites create a soft atmosphere, although it is not in any way background music, I would instead define it a well done “soundtrack”, also in terms of sound quality that is unexceptionable.
Hisses, rustles, gusts of sounds, while others are kept specially low in a game of volumes that is somewhat the pivot around which the album revolves. It is required to listen to this work very carefully, since it is somewhat cerebral and it designs a well-studied landscape. The silence is one of the traits that characterize the appearance of this work, so it happens that in the forty minute journey of the final track …From The Past… Out Of The Future, there are several blackouts and changes of perspective. This results in a performance that in its calm hides some kind of anxiety, certainly gloomy colors. Lately I have the impression that in some spheres noise is finally back, almost reaching popularity, while in other contexts abstraction and ‘expressionless’ prevail. This certainly is not a criticism, more like a statement of fact. It’s also true that if any music belongs to its own time, I would say that this is the right time to escape from reality … Escape From New York all-round. (Andrea Ferraris)