Escape From Today / Dunque
Paolo Spaccamonti has been a major player in the lively Italian avant-garde scene for the last ten years or so, collaborating with the likes of musicians Stefano Pilla, Mombu and Ramon Moro as well as Ben Chasny, Jim White and Jochen Arbeit. Not content with musicians, he also collaborates with photographers and video artists, so it is no surprise that his latest opus Volume Quattro is a series of instrumental pieces that centre around his love of the electric guitar.
Apparently, besides a few rhythmic beats, all sounds on the album are produced by the electric guitar, but the variety of tones and sensations generated are beyond what one might expect. There are a lot of solo guitar albums around at the moment, but so many seem to follow the American fingerpicking tradition or variations thereon — but here Paolo branches into lesser-trodden directions and we should be more than happy to follow.
A faint howl introduces Volume Quattro, coming on like a hunting horn, a scene setting blast that is cut off in its prime and launches into the slow mechanised beat of “Ablazioni”, over which Paolo stretches a twisting metallic guitar line that shivers in a cold glow. It is glacial, the low-temperature crawl a preparation for high-altitude travel through rarefied, half-remembered vistas, dreamy and soaring.Volume Quattro sparkles and shimmers in the way ice crystals do in some hidden crevasse; a world of beauty that is not visible to the average person. It is a lonely sight, with the echoes of the tones bouncing back like gently falling flakes. It isn’t all reserved solitude though, as “Nessun Codarde Tranne Voi” is far angrier with its heavy strings harsh in the dusty landscape.
Sand borne by a heavy wind blasts against us as we make slow progress, wrapped up against the punishing desert storm. The rapid juxtapositions between the tracks keeps us involved as “Un Gelido Inverno”, with its sparse, echoing notes evoking a desolate lap steel in an old cantina, its keening moan and the echo of the brush of strings is a spare texture accentuating its solitary nature.The ascending volume and blistering, feral noise is the first look down, the first thought that all is not light and airy, but it doesn’t last long as the album wends its way out in a blur of scuffed note loops and solitary tones winding higher and higher, fuzzy and distended in “Tutto Bene Quel Che Finische”, or sparse and full of morning clarity on “Luce”. Here, the gradual warming of the day takes its effect on the notes’ clarity and a shimmering sensation unfolds, working into the scant beat of final track “Diagonal”.
The narrative guitar takes us gently by the hand and shows us how simple things can be, a wash of feedback drone shimmering like a setting sun that gradually submerges until silence prevails again, leaving us with a treat for guitar lovers and soundscape dreamers alike.-Mr Olivetti-
