My Home, Sinking: My Home, Sinking
Fluid Audio

Considering how well My Home, Sinking works as an encompassing portrait of Enrico Coniglio's talents, one part of me wishes he had simply issued the electroacoustic recording under his own name rather than as a self-titled release under a new alias. The forty-four-minute set documents Coniglio as musician (electric guitar, harmonica, melodica, percussion, voice), soundscaper, composer, and field recordist, as well as sensitive accompanist to cellist Katie English, vocalists Barbara De Dominicis and vocalist Laura Sheeran, and others. Presented in Fluid Audio's usual deluxe manner (a four-panel letterpressed cover accompanied by a twelve-page photographic book and five bespoke prints), the release has been made available in an edition of 250 physical copies.

Fans of experimental-ambient guitar playing will right away cotton to My Home, Sinking when it starts with the reverberant twang and shimmering haze of “The Void” and evokes some heat-drenched, limitless expanse of desert. English's first appearance occurs on “Morning Walk” where her restrained sawing provides a stark contrast to Coniglio's delicate strums and percussive treatments. The album's song-styled dimension comes through in “Fading to White” when Sheeran's angelic vocals appear alongside cello, guitars, and harmonica wheeze. De Dominicis (Parallel 41) brings her distinctive Sprechstimme style to the slow-motion lilt of “Sunset Eyed” plus a girlish warble and deep-throated vibrato to “Touching the Void.” My Home, Sinking's ambient identity, on the other hand, surfaces in the soothing meditation “Skyline Obscured,” while a more texture-heavy soundscaping style infuses “The Body Tired” thanks to Orla Wren's piano and synthesizer, English's cello, and Coniglio's guitar. On the field recordings tip, “Trump Trump” onomatopoeically presents the sounds of footsteps trudging through the outdoors.

The tone of the album is generally restrained, with Coniglio and company emphasizing a gentle and nuanced approach in their vocal reveries and instrumental scene-paintings. With one exception (“Descending,” where Coniglio unleashes some raw guitar fireworks), My Home, Sinking doesn't impart its message abrasively, in other words, but instead aspires to seduce the listener through subtler means.

June 2013