Review Summary: Ambient music like a sacral dimension
During the last years, ambient music gave birth to a number of great quality artists, from Tim Hecker to Lawrence English, or Ben Frost. Also in Italy there is an interesting ambient scene, that boasts artists like Giulio Aldinucci, from Siena. In 2015, Aldinucci has submitted his ‘Spazio Sacro’ for Time Released Sound, which represents for me, a beatiful surprise. Aldinucci already wrote a few releases and collaborations with Ian Hawgood, Francis M. Gri, Francesco Giannico and Pleq, published by Home Normal (UK/J), KrysaliSound (I), Dronarivm (RUS) and Eilean (F). In addition to his contribution to various collective works, he wrote music for theatre, video art, documentaries and short movies. With ‘Spazio Sacro’, he has given us a conspicuous work able to compare two characters of ambient music: ambient intended like a kind of music that can be part of the ambient itself (recording of noises and natural sounds), and ambient intended like a music thought to ricreate an ambient (to recall an ambient itself). In this release, he did a complicated work attempting to immerse himself in his own mind, trying to recall his memories, from his childhood in Siena, (the place in which he lived since he was a child), to the relationship with sacred rites and his spiritual experiences. In fact, the thematic of spirituality is present in the release, and everything leads to it. Giulio contemplates a travel across what is present and what has passed, bringing all dimensions to sacredness. The release is full of reverberates, sonor fragments meticulously collected (outside school, voices of people who pray in the church, cicada’s verses, water fountains) and organic modulations. Across this soundscapes, ‘Spazio Sacro’ represents an enigmatic stretch. It offers confusing steps blended with confused city voices, like ‘Sator’, and tracks with fulgid sospensions, like ‘Ricordo’. The work, ends with tracks that concern internal prayers like ‘Camino’, that reflects a strong vital impulse. Giulio needs to transform and manipulate his own field recordings in spaces inherent to memories and experiences from his past, making them converging toward a sacred hymn to life and to its precious indecipherability.
