AOEMUSIC - Songs Such As No Radio Plays

Usually, a passion for music takes hold of body and soul, twists around them, and becomes an integral part of them. A process as simple as it is astonishing happened to Sergio Pigozzi aka AOEmusic, an acronym standing for “Acceleration Of Emotions”.

Born in Verona in 1975, he developed a fatal attraction to melody from his very early teens. He played bass in a few punk bands in his hometown, and began getting comfortable with instruments like the sequencer and the synth, setting his personal path as a composer in motion. His first major collaboration came through his encounter with Massimo Turco (critic and judge at Arezzo Wave), who brought Sergio on as support act for Casino Royale. Unfortunately, the experience proved disappointing, and the project died before it had even begun.

The self-production process grew ever more substantial, and in 2001 a contact with Massimo of the “Black Sun Productions” collective led to a face-to-face meeting in Zurich. Here a relationship developed with one of the darkest and most mysterious realities in music: Coil. This encounter gave rise to a few projects, initially taking shape as a remix work on the album “Astral Walk”, later continued with the groundwork for a piece composed together, called "The Repossession Of The Lost Innoncence”, which sadly never saw the light of day.

The peak of this experience came with the recording of the track "La Canzone Dei Pendagli Da Forca" on their penultimate album, “OperettAmorale". Meanwhile, his career as a composer led to his first album, titled “Starting At The End”, collecting all his early works, more cinematic in nature, with a very seductive soundtrack-like quality.

“Songs Such As No Radio Plays” was completed in the first months of 2007. Inside are sounds, interweavings and solutions that express the full personality of the author; a deeply personal electronic work, one might say. True "emotional music". The experimental and less relaxed character of the present work takes the place of his older records (the aforementioned “Starting At The End”), without repudiating the past, but blending impressions, atmospheres and sensations into a result that is hard to define; the decoration, from one moment to the next, takes shape in a detail, in the smallest aspect. A music that reveals its essence gradually, leaving the listener with a minimal margin of comprehension.

The opening immediately relies on the emotionality of “Beat Off”, a splendid clash between piano parts, cadenced with great delicacy, and subtle, diluted, obsessive beats. The remarkable naturalness with which this first episode flows highlights Sergio's skill as an assembler. Although the approach owes something to certain piano experiments adorned with minimal-techno hiccups (see Murcof's debut album), the taste and sensitivity with which the icy rhythm stands out forcefully against the silence of the piano notes turns any doubt into certainty.

The following “Thin” takes a more relaxed and less rhythmic approach, a sort of dark-hued digital jazz, marked by an unrelenting down-tempo pace.

The album's flow reveals a strongly heterogeneous imprint, disorienting the listener with each track. “New Radio” takes the surefire shortcut of slippery strings set against a series of very upbeat electronic patterns. The arrival of some rhythmic hits, mixed and spaced with great balance, gives the central section of the composition a contagious energy.

Softer tones in “AM”, embellished by the grace of some violins, and fine touches of abstraction in the fragmented “XJ2911”. The variety of atmospheres evoked is confirmed by this pairing as well, a skill the author plays with great mastery and precision.

The interweaving of melodies in “Angels e Gods” shifts attention to more properly rhythmic aspects never revealed before. “I Can’t No Longer Sleep” has the merit of picking up the unfinished thread of the first track, again using the piano as the main instrument, here however supported by various keyboards and digital dust of many kinds.

As already noted in commenting on his early works, the cinematic slant of this music never fully lies dormant, and here it surfaces with force, without ever growing tiresome.

Nearing the close, the bewitching “Backward” gives way to a very relaxed guitar chord, joined by tribal percussion. “Trasformazioni” unfolds in all its splendor through an unexpected ambient transformation. This is not relaxing music: the ever-present glitch jolts lend a sickly vitality to an episode whose value lies in its incisiveness. The busy “Time For Fm” brings things to a close, a fairly well-executed nod to a certain experimental techno, perhaps a little out of step with the remaining nine tracks.

In conclusion, it seems necessary to highlight how Italian electronic productions have, in recent years, released works and new artists of great significance. From the impressive effort by Obsil last year, through the recent project Echoes Of The Whales, to this “Songs Such As No Radio Plays”, which reveals great qualities, perhaps a little muddled, but of undoubted value, qualities that could be confirmed in the future through more cohesive developments.

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09/09/2007