ANDREA LAUDANTE - Banat Banat Ban Jai

Pianism and concrete music research are two elements that aren't easy to bring together within a single context. Young pianist Andrea Laudante takes his first recorded steps with his debut album, released on the Krysali Sound label, "Banat Banat Ban Jai", attempting this arduous path which, if followed through to the end, could yield considerable rewards.

Elements of French musique concrète coexist with the prepared-piano technique of John Cage, paired with the same composer's ante litteram minimalism, and a certain fascination with vaguely Eastern sonorities that merge with synthetic textures. Add to this a skillful placement of field recordings that help sketch out various landscapes, accompanying us on a hypothetical journey whose central subject is subtraction — a starting point from which, step by step, one can reach the goal of delivering the listener to their own true essence, that is, rediscovering oneself in the presence of music, thanks to music (in this case an irreplaceable tool for meditation).

Purely Cagean pianism surfaces at times, as in "In A Scapeland", probably a reference to the American composer's pioneering masterpiece, full-blown concretism in pure Pierre Schaeffer style ("Maheshwara"), bucolic field recordings ("Shinrin Yoku") that flow into romantic pianism before arriving at a minimal take on modern classical ("Pratah Smarami"). The album's peaks are reached on the opening track "Southern Lights", a gem of almost sublime balance between piano, electronics and background noise. Standing in counterpoint to it is "From Benares To Yerevan", a moment of Eastern mysticism concealing both meditation and unease, echoing Popol Vuh with saxophones stretched to the edge of ambient, like a simplified version of Harold Budd's masterpiece, "The Pavilion Of Dreams".

Closing the record is "Somewhere Above This Shining Orange", another moment of balance built on a melancholic piano stripped down to its essence/absence, which steps aside to make room, first for electroacoustic undercurrents, then for synths that grow ever more vivid and commanding.

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10/02/2020