PUNCK - Nowhere Campfire Tapes

Third release under the Punck moniker for Adriano Zanni, an artist active in the Italian electroacoustic scene since the mid-90s.

After the debut "Mu", released in 2002 on cd-r, came the 3-inch "A Movie Without Images" on Ctrl+Alt+Canc, a small netlabel founded by Zanni himself and devoted to spreading experimental sounds, whose catalogue also includes, among others, Bruno Dorella's Ovo and Sinistri.

"Nowhere Campfire Tapes" is therefore a mature work from an artist well aware of his own means and his own background, both musical and otherwise.

The starting point is a distinctly domestic and territorial dimension, steeped in familiar threads that recur throughout the imagination of the Ravenna-born artist.

The relationship between the element of water and the surrounding environment is the common thread running through the album's four tracks.

Water and life, man and everything.

The meaning and spirit of field recording are revived here, and even amplified by the electronic dimension.

The 12 minutes of "Almost Anything" open with a hiss, over which concretisms and frequencies are then layered, followed by rain - a vital lifeblood amid so much cold technology.

On the second track, "Adriatico Lisergico", water is the dominant element. The sea rumbling in the background and voices dissolving into glitches are crucial elements, sounds that evoke a "homemade" imagery rich in experimental simplicity, yet at the same time highly effective and, above all, evocative - an ideal point of connection between music and setting.

The campfire that recurs in the title is, in a few words, electronic sound made human - a task that's far from easy.

Rain that comes and goes, alternating with Paolo Ippoliti's words on "Tsunami Notes", as menacing as the storm that inspires it, without ever having to resort to overstatement.

The sense of catastrophe comes from the contrast between the sound of a trickling stream and a whistle rising ever higher in frequency, a plane (?) in the background - truly beautiful.

It all closes with "Almost Nothing", which turns out to be the track most "easily" traceable to some of the music that inspires Punck, namely Raster Noton and early-Nineties electro-acoustic work.

"Easily" in scare quotes, because the listening experience remains fairly unusual throughout.

And it's precisely the "homemade" sounds (the noise of a remote-controlled toy car, a forklift?) that throw you off, making it almost a burden to trace everything back to already-familiar sonic forms.

Armed "only" with a laptop and a microphone, Zanni manages to pull off the difficult task of blending electronics and humanity without ever coming across as pretentious or predictable.

A truly beautiful record - make the most of it.

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30/04/2026