ANGELO PETRONELLA - Rimandi e Scoperte

"One is born in a place, and that place becomes a point of orientation. A map of structures, proportions, and relations between fullness and emptiness. In my place there is an arch, the gateway and the obstacle of the flow, passage and wall. There is space between things – separation – and a scalpel of light that carves out their contours. In my place the light is violent and precise: it cuts, isolates and confuses. Every thing is alone, contained within its edge, cut out, and the gaze sings the caesuras, like a story told one syllable at a time".

These words engraved in the booklet of "Rimandi e Scoperte" – Die Schachtel's second release after "Sintesi Da Un Diario" from 2006 – capture the essence of Angelo Petronella's approach to sound, based on giving form to the symbiotic relationship that takes root between ambient sounds and the spaces they describe. Nothing entirely new, admittedly, given that much of the sound art of recent years has turned precisely toward the spatial dimension of sound. Yet across these three long tracks one senses an air of tension and discovery, of something in constant becoming, which turns every note into a hallucinatory aleph capable of unlocking a myriad of sensations, often quite contrasting ones.

The first track unfolds at a meditative pace; one almost feels that something is about to happen at any moment, and yet the meaning of its flow lies precisely in the waiting. The second track climbs along more rugged paths, though extremely cold and unsettling, recalling Nurse With Wound's "Soliloquy For Lilith" by way of Nurse With Wound.

In the third composition, space finally opens up to sound, embracing it in an inseparable embrace. An interlocking of frequencies and tones, a dark forest of celestial and at once sinister harmonies leads the sound toward the realm of emotion (at least in its opening section), before plunging into a pool of radioactive isolationism.

That is all, and words are almost too much: this music speaks for itself. More than listening to it, it is enough to perceive its contours and caesuras, its centers and peripheries, or to let oneself be swept along by the flow and lose one's bearings. The work of Die Schachtel on artwork and packaging is priceless, as always extremely synesthetic.

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24/07/2010