OBSIL - Points

The Rome-based label Disasters By Choice, already noted in the past for its research-driven output (and previously covered on these pages with reviews of Melodium), returns with a work built on unusual, original melodic solutions. This time, however, the production is entirely Italian. Yes, because Obsil, the artist in question, is a young man born in Siena in 1981, named Giulio Aldinucci. Captivated by music from an early age (with formal studies to match), he began taking a serious interest in electronic music around the mid-90s. Immersed in a remote and beautiful stretch of Sienese countryside, his studio is a small compositional refuge housing the most disparate array of instruments: digital synthesizers dating back to the early 80s, complex "hybrid" digital/analog contraptions, and thoroughly up-to-date Max/Msp programming procedures.

Alongside such a thorough and meticulous selection of the right rhythms to weave into his compositions, Aldinucci has also taken an interest in numerous synthesis methods, an activity that led him to make recordings taken directly "in the field": the well-known field recordings.

Analyzing the cohesive, flowing progression of the work, the first thing you notice is a strong pianistic imprint. Notes are dismembered, broken apart, placed on various planes of execution, rendered unrecognizable through all manner of treatments. There's a strong leaning toward timbral experimentation, at times muffled beneath a sweet blanket of frothy melody, at times sharp and delirious, where ordered chaos reigns supreme.

Another evident element is a love for vintage digital sounds, present pretty much everywhere, both in the skeleton and in the trimmings of the various tracks. Floating bubbles, amateurish and grainy loops, digital shimmer, sounds absent-mindedly dissolved into a cloak of dormant noise.

The opening "Curtains" is an extremely tangled knot in which glitch schizophrenias, sinuous sonic flows and digital howls all converge. Every single component blends together with precision, and a sense of disorientation seems to loom close; then, in the finale, a few piano notes loosen the grip and lead us to the end with a caress.

"003, _ou" is less fractured and "agitated" than the previous track: a soft bed of frothy synths carves little clouds into the air with gentleness and tact, cyclical and smooth timbres alternate with ease and skill. This is perhaps the piece where the work (of exhumation) done on early-80s digital synthesizers is most evident. In some passages, you can hear faint echoes of one of the genre's pioneers, Jean-Michel Jarre.

The infatuation with piano keys, and their sound, duly reawakens in "ae", where the most significant (and beautiful) moments concentrate around the point where "those" sounds are thrown into a context made up of fussy trinkets, silent punctuation, and tiny, minimal fragmentations.

While "Di Paese" lets itself get carried away by a touch too much boldness, remaining nonetheless functional and positive, the following episode, "Proteso", is an interesting development of the ideas hinted at in the opening track, a beguiling electronic ballad in whose limbs restless sonic souls stir fervently, impatient to burst out, always with the (by now inevitable) presence of the piano.

"Galgano's Tree" gets by with great ease amid a series of sounds that seem like percussion (but maybe aren't) and an intricate thicket of self-generating bleeps, carving out an atmosphere that's vaguely dreamlike, amateurish, suited to a rural, silent and glacial setting.

"Wachzustand" draws a bit from everywhere among the stylistic references described in the previous tracks, blending synth-etic temptations with tremulous avant-garde influences, turning out, all things considered, to be a beautiful and dark track, perhaps the most significant (or representative) episode on the whole record, precisely because it encompasses every trait of Obsil's distinctive style.

The next two compositions share a gorgeous pair of titles: "L'arsa metà dei pini" and "Tremolanti concentrazioni luminose sparse (sui crinali)". And this element helps point you toward the right way to listen: the first track devises and builds the soundtrack for an afternoon scorched by the sun, in the middle of a forest; the second is tremulous, remaining luminous, radiant, always poised between sweetness and noise.

"Sui Tetti" rounds off and confirms the good work done in exploring and researching "sweet" sounds by definition, set within a compositional framework that's still "avant" in nature, yet never disturbing or aggressive. And so, letting yourself go, letting yourself be carried along by these faint, barely-sketched timbres, is as easy as closing your eyes in front of a beautiful landscape and imagining yourself taking flight.

In "(Presages)" there's a desire to lose your mind and linger in a limbo between heaven and earth, with birdsong, gusts of wind and a bolt of lightning striking from the other side; "Stasi Sui Tigli", the closer, is a haunting sequence of regular, precise, colorful and purposeful sounds. You seem to hear water falling incessantly, drops hitting different surfaces and giving off multifaceted sounds, leaves coming apart, an animal running and then stopping to rest beneath a tree — yes, perhaps a lime tree, just like the title says.

In this kind of electronic music, it's not common to come across artists capable of offering warmth. Despite being a debut, young Obsil already shows he can compose emotional music, delightfully secluded in his own world of dreams, capable of leaving a mark on the mind of even the most casual listener.

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07/10/2006