Article
Kate Simko

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2562
3ofmillions
3 Seconds Of Air
Monty Adkins
Agoria
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Bodzin Vs Romboy
Build
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Blake Carrington
Codes In The Clouds
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FiRES WERE SHOT
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Kate Simko
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Compilations / Mixes
5ZIG
20 F@#&ING Years
Michelangelo Antonioni
Fabric 56: Derrick Carter

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Agoria featuring Kid A
Aleph
A Story of Rats
Orlando B.
Ceremony
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Matthew Dear
Entia Non & Tanner Menard
Nick Kuepfer
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Mat Le Star
Lulacruza
Paul Lyman
Moss
Resampled Part 1
Resampled Part 2
Snoretex
Subeena

VA: Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy And Epilogue
and/OAR

Michelangelo Antonioni's filmography offers such a rich source of imagery and themes it's a wonder no experimental music project has appeared until now based upon it. All credit goes to and/OAR, then, for choosing the Italian auteur as the third in its film director series (previous volumes honoured Andrei Tarkovsky and Yasujiro Ozu), with the two-disc set, formally titled Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy and Epilogue, focusing on L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1962), and Deserto Rosso (1963). Antonioni is, of course, the master of ennui and alienation whose works are populated by wandering souls who either vanish altogether (L'Avventura) or co-exist but with the littlest of connection to one another. Not surprisingly, he preferred that his films be generally unencumbered by music's presence, believing that his stories would breathe better without such interference; in that regard, Giovanni Fusco, whose music appears in most of Antonioni's films from the late 1950s to the early ‘60s, apparently declared, “The first rule for any musician who intends to collaborate with Antonioni, is to forget that he is a musician!”

A few other background details are worth noting before turning to the contents of the release itself, specifically Antonioni's sensitivity to the importance of natural sounds—what he regarded as the “true music” of a film—and the pioneering electronic music that Vittorio Gelmetti contributed to Deserto Rosso. Such dimensions of the director's work draw a clear line connecting the artists featured on and/OAR's recording, all of whom in one way or another share like-minded sensitivities to environmental sound and to the role of electronics in current music-making practices. The set features over two hours of lower-case, electro-acoustic works peppered with the kinds of pregnant pauses and empty spaces that characterize Antonioni's films. Some of the pieces (all untitled) are heavily electronic in nature (Marc Behrens' turbulent setting, Antti Rannisto's throbbing drone), while others inhabit an interzone where acoustic instruments (clarinet, cello), natural sounds (industrial creaks, cavernous rumbling), and electronic manipulations reside. The artists involved will be familiar to those conversant with the microsound genre, with figures such as Roel Meelkop, Ben Owen, i8u, Lawrence English, Steinbrüchel, Jason Kahn, and Tomas Phillips taking part. The piece by Pali Meursault (with Ici-Même) stands out as one of the settings that is most rich in outdoor sounds, with train clatter, traffic noise, and bird sounds threading their way into the mix. Richard Garet's sub-lunar exploration sounds like the essence of La Notte and L'Eclisse distilled down to a seven-minute form. Dale Lloyd's brief piano rumination arrives as a breath of fresh air amidst such abstractions, as does Marihiko Hara's at album's close.

The package for the release includes two quotes taken from Seymour Chatman's 1985 book Antonioni: Or, the Surface of the World, one of which in particular merits inclusion here for the clarity it brings to the director's approach: “Antonioni asks us to take a slow, steady look at the world around us, to forget our ordinary preoccupations, and to contemplate that which lies slightly athwart them.” Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy and Epilogue accomplishes much the same thing, albeit in its own unique fashion.

April 2011