May 17, 2020

Sundaze 2020

Hello, whilst more and more feeble minded succumb to the insane rightwing propaganda Trump allies spew out day after day attempting to contaminate real news with the label 'fake news'. Corona supporters rejoice with so many bodies eager to receive and transmit the virus during "the great awakening.". The US is so beyond confused, the country is in danger of collapse with riots turning into armed conflict and rightwing groups trying to takeover large parts of the country, therefor i very much doubt there will be regular presidential elections this year.


Today's Artist is Stefano Musso who began recording music under the pseudonym of Alio Die in 1989. "Alio Die" is Latin for "another day", used as a greeting in Roman times as a positive look towards a better tomorrow......N'Joy

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

Stefano Musso studied art and electronics in his home town of Milan, Italy,  and began performing  ambient, electro-acoustic music under the name Alio Die in 1989. Characterized by evocative acoustic sounds manipulated and tendered electronically, Alio Die's work builds intimate soundscapes tied to the mystery and majesty of life and nature. His first CD "Under an Holy Ritual", released on his label Hic Sunt Leones in 1992 and re-released on Projekt in 1993, was received with international acclaim. Enthusiastically received in his home country, 'Holy Ritual' expanded Musso's international presence significantly in 1993 when it was licensed by the popular U.S. darkwave label Projekt. His music is a shadowy, cavernous, intensely detailed fusion of acoustical elements, step-and-repeat sample treatments, sparse, echoing percussion, and deep, atmospheric sound design, playing ambient's static tendencies off of shifting melodic and textural passages that suggest movement without sacrificing the music's vague, entropic formlessness.   He subsequently released more than 25 CDs, and collaborated  with many well-known artists such as Robert Rich, Vidna Obmana, Mathias Grassow, Nick Parkin, Yannick Dauby,  Amelia Cuni, Raffaele Serra, Ora, Antonio Testa.

"Natural and acoustic sounds and selected noises, electronically treated and reworked, are integrated in a meditative and spiritual context that often, in the feeling, becomes close to a prayer. Visible static, this music is rich of hidden sounds, layers of elements to discover at each listening. Alio Die's music, in the consciousness space that creates, it's a melting of technology and mysticism, like a new ritual with echoes of a medioeval time, deep and grounded in introspection."

and as this bio is rather limited here's an interview he did in 2008

2008 intervew by Tobias Fischer, he is editor-in-chief of tokafi, publisher of 15 Questions and a cultural editor for Germany's biggest Printmag on Recording, „Beat“.

Hi! How are you? Where are you?
I’m fine, moving at a good point.

What’s your view on the music scene at present? Is there a crisis?
If you mean the music business, yes it is in a kind of crisis... We know the reasons about that, downloads from the internet mainly. Less people buy original cds and more and more people copy. I’s happening to experimental and non commercial music, too, where listener were usually more motivated to buy the real cd. So we see that sales are strongly in decline and lots of shops and distributors have had to close down and cease their activities after many years.

On the other hand, the number of releases is still growing a lot, so the crisis it is not at all on the artistic activity side. With this in mind, I try to optimize the quality of the cd releases with digipack artworks and limited editions of 300 copies. The possibility of getting information quicker and exchange it is a good input to creativity, expecially for people which before lived in a kind of isolation from the rest of the world where they thought the things happened.

What, would you say, are the factors of your creativity? What “inspires” you?
My creativity derives from my special feeling about reality. Perhaps it is that what is forbidden and missing in our dayly life, which inspires me, it is a kind of ‘nostalgic’ feeling in a purified way, without the emotional aspect. I can find inspiration in nature or through observing life itself, or from other music and cultures as well. I’m intersted in disclosing the magic of the present moment in multilayered feelings of a simple complexity. The medicine must work on myself first, but the mixture must be usefull to everybody confronted with that listening experience, so I try to build up something not too personal, and perfectly tuned. I also aim at expressing the circularity of time, to find a point of view that is beyond time.


How would you describe your method of composing?
Taking inspiration from a kind of symbolic language through which I’ve found access to its code, I combine and decorate feelings by different sound elements, then add some random elements born from the present moment.

The process includes improvisation in the sessions with acoustic instruments and objects, but then the sounds are mixed in an accurate way and not so much things are left out.. I let Intuition guide random elements like synchronisation between layers and filters for example. I usually start experimenting with tunings derived from acoustic recordings and field recordings and then treat the sounds in my studio. I also like to sample in a creative way. By this I mean transforming the original source into something different...


How do you see the relationship between sound and composition?
In my music, the qualities of sound and composition are very closely aligned. Some melodical elements are also a part of it, but the more important thing is the right relation between all the ingredients of the music, tunes and vibes coming together to create a new creature ready to work with moods and states of consciousness of the listener.

How strictly do you separate improvising and composing?
Improvisations are usually directed to find a natural feeling that is not yet music, but sometimes it is a ‘controlled’ improvisation by special tunings already decided before. In any case, in the improvisational process I try to capture the feeling of the moment. This is already part of the composition, as it will help to give direction to the entire process of the recordings.


What does the term „new“ mean to you in connection with music?
Something new is something that brings together different elements for the first time, or old elements combined in a new way.

There is nothing new at all, I think usually we transform differents inputs and styles into a new language that come from our personal sensibility and creativity. Creativity must surely be fresh and new everytime, but personally, I like the ancient and the mysterious knowledge that comes from the past, as I don’t belive in any kind of ‘evolution’... In our era, to speak about devolution it actually more correct.


Do you personally enjoy multimedia as an enrichment or do you feel that it is leading away from the essence of what you want to achieve?
I personally enjoy a creative use of new technology. The point is not to agree or disagree with a new way of entertainment, but in the way we use it.


What constitutes a good live performance in your opinion? What’s your approach to performing on stage?
I don’t play live often. This is due to the fact that it is not possible replicating the works I create in the studio in a concert situation. So I tried to adapt some part of acoustical inserts and improvisations with real instruments with the looped electronic effects already embedded into basic sounds. I played live performances few times with Opium and with Zeit on the last two occasions.

I used also a support of a video with beautiful morphings of paintings by Yanusz Gilewicz,and kaleidoscopic mandalas images by Alessandro Vittorio(Ozis) and the results was wonderful.

Do you feel an artist has a certain duty towards anyone but himself? Or to put it differently: Should art have a political/social or any other aspect apart from a personal sensation?
Absolutely. I don’t take care of political/ social matter at all, but in any case I think the muse of art should guide one in some way, giving inspiration to new possibilities in cultural and human aspects. Apart  from entertainment, this is a basic meaning and primary reason for music that can build bridges towards different levels of consciousness. If the work of an artist, apart from his originality, is totally disconnected from this important duty, it is totally devoid of any meaning and it is only self-celebratory.


How, would you say, could non-mainstream forms of music reach wider audiences without sacrificing their soul?
In our times there is no risk of becoming too popular with this music or of become commercial- At least not for me... It does happen sometimes with other kinds of ”Ambient” music but still very rarely.


You are given the position of artistic director of a festival. What would be on your program?
Medieval-pagan music like Faun, Daemonia Nimphe, In Gowan Ring for the afternoon, Jack or Jive, Amelia Cuni and Terry Riley, evening and Robert Rich, all night long.


Many artists dream of a “magnum opus”. Do you have a vision of what yours would sound like?
Usually it is the last music released.. But in this case more than usually it is my last album AURA SEMINALIS. You must know that I considered Opus Magnum as the title to this one (I later rejected it for being too obvious..). By the way my Opus magnum will be researched again and looped again later, it is a work still in progress...

xxxxx

Five Thousand Spirits is a Project between Stefano Musso (Alio Die), Raffaele Serra, and Claudio Dondo (Runes Order). Five Thousand Spirits' first album, A Tapestry For Sorcerers, released in 1995, was a Dark Ambient album with a cosmic feel more akin to Runes Orders work than Alio Die or Raffaele Serra's work, after this album, Claudio Dondo quit the group and it became a project of Musso and Serra. This line-up has since released five albums, all similar in sound to both artists solo work, which is oriented towards minimal and ethnic styled ambient.


xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

Five Thousand Spirits is a music project/entity and in this, their first release, feautures the collaboration between Stefano Musso, Raffaele Serra, and Claudio Dondo (Runes Order), who abandoned the project after this release. Runes Order's knowledgeable followers will also feel at home, but for any new comer, this is "virgin" territory and to be honest one of the best "prog/electronic" bands, I have heard in ages. Sublime interactions between, vibrant, cosmic, highly creative and emotinally charged atmospheres, fusioned with both intelligent and experimental song writing, enhanced by a flawless performance of an almost all-electronic ensemble, consiting exactly as follows: Raffaele Serra playing synth, harmonium and samplers, Claudio Dondo on synth and electronics and Stefano Muso's samplers. Trend setting, original as unique, rich in its musical ideas which never cease in offering all kind of creative and enchanting or obscure yet detached envirnonments, underlined strongly with masterful melody lines that simply sound and are genius !



Five Thousand Spirits - A Tapestry For Sourcerers (flac 214mb)

1. From Sea To Sea (2:18)
2. Enter, So Far From This Sky (10:37)
3. Alphamantra (4:37)
4. Onyx (6:38)
5. Eskdalemuir(16:39)
6. Lais (7:57)
7. Haat-Lunis (8:00)
8. Limahians (7:25)

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

After Claudio Dondo's early departure from Five Thousand Spirits, soon after their first release, Raffaele Serra and Stefano Musso (Alio Die) took charge of all the "spirits" of the project and played between both all electronics, synths and effects for this "Mesmeric Revelation", 1999 project. This second release starts off with what I call an "electronic environmental symphony" that lasts around 30 minutes +-, with inner sections quiet well defined as they are perfectly blended with each other's movements and different scopes, that travel through pure cosmic electronic music across mid-western canons and slight multinational details. Never sticking to a single musical figure, the effect in fact is as rich as it is "mesmeric". The following four compositions, which by the way are named "untitled" as the first, aside from being shorter in time (5 to 7 minutes +-), are closer to the placid electronic ambients, which both musicians have worked with in their solo releases. Spacious, invisible like, slow paced enticing musical structures, alongside some "unearthly" musical territories, which in fact are too demanding to actually work out as "ambient music" in its strict form, due to their uncompromising songwriting, which can turn to be bright as obscure in a single song without notice, yet totally friendly if you let yourself in.



Five Thousand Spirits - Mesmeric Revelation (flac  154mb)

1. Mesmeric Revelation I (31:17)
2. Mesmeric Revelation II (3:25)
3. Mesmeric Revelation III (4:08)
4. Mesmeric Revelation IV (7:12)
5. Mesmeric Revelation V (6:00)

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

The cosmos and the mechanical are the "spirits" within this 2006, Five Thousand Spirits "Quantum Consciousness". A quantum leap, music wise, in comparisson to their 1990's first two releases. Raffaele Serra and Stefano Musso aka Alio Die, release 7 years later, this the first part of a two parts project that same year. An unparalleled adventure into the past and future of the famous 70's "cosmic music" electronics, shamelessly but WITHOUT ripping off nobody's language. They already have their OWN and it is more than perfectly woven, and it shows without question, in this highly modern and unique approach to yesteryear's electronic music canons. It is industrial, as it is the heavens, as it is the pitch black cosmos or its multicolored stars. It is human yet monstrous. It is the droning "noise/ambient" music like Fripp & Eno's 1973, "No Pussyfooting" or their 1975 "Evening Star", in its level of experimentation and way ahead creativity, to kind of construct a referential, if so, let's say to polished new territories without avoiding the "pure electronics" experimentation side of that era. It is prog/electronics, but way above the already stated (and over-stated) "Berlin School´s" electronic languages. It is humanly poetic, among non-human elements. The structured and emotional, yet detached, melody lines, conjure a memorable an intimate experience all way through, non stop, flawless !



 Five Thousand Spirits - Quantum Consciousness  (flac 289mb)

1. Re-Entry (11:22)
2. Green Desire (14:18)
3. If The Stars Are Gods (8:00)
4. Through The Magicscope (8:34)
5. Reflections On Black (15:57)

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

"Schwarzschild Radius, also called gravitational radius, distance that defines the size at which a spherical astronomical object such as a star becomes a black hole. A black hole is an object so dense that not even light can escape the pull of its gravitational force (seeGravitation). If an object collapses to within its Schwarzschild radius, it becomes a black hole. The radius is named after German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild, who derived the first model of a black hole in 1916."

The return by Five Thousand Spirits Schwarzschild Radius album,second part of a series, it is an unbroken journey of great intensity that Raffaele Serra ed Alio Die have characterized with an electronic refine touch and a flood vitality, always at the threshold of a mystery's whirlpool, an electronic mantra that in these lands have already given some kind of dependance. Great second chapter after the great 'Quantum Consciousness'.



 Five Thousand Spirits - Schwarzschild Radius  (flac 296mb)

1. Immaculate Perception (9:59)
2. Sirius Remembered (7:20)
3. Blackwater Days (8:56)
4. Unholy Alliance (7:49)
5. Akua Nuten (8:16)
6. Fog Pumas (11:53)

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx



1 comment:

  1. Having recently lost over 1t of music largely comprised of this sort of thing I'm greatly appreciative of your on-going efforts to keep this music not only available -- but free for the sharing. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete