David Monacchi
PAESAGGI DI LIBERO ASCOLTO
Ants
In: Paris Transatlantic Magazin
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/main/home.html
David Monacchi
PAESAGGI DI LIBERO ASCOLTO
Ants
A list of composers and performers who've taken to recording and using natural sound in their work
would be about five times as long as this review, but although "field recordings" is a term that pops up
increasingly on albums of new music – both composed and improvised – there are as many different ways
to use them as there are fields to record. Hildegard Westerkamp and Loren Chasse both like to poke
around the Pacific seashore but their respective compositions are worlds apart; there's also the question
of hi or lo (or no) fi: there's one hell of a difference between Eric La Casa's meticulous montages and Aki
Onda's grainy old cassettes.
As far as sound quality goes, Italian composer David Monacchi's recordings are superb, and he spares you
no detail when it comes to listing the equipment he uses to make them. Ciclo Circadiano (1993), like
several sound art pieces from Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien No. 1 to Chris Watson's Weather Report, is an
exercise in compositional sleight of hand, compressing a single day (24 hours) in the Montefeltro Valley
into 24 minutes. From the magnificent song of what I imagine is a nightingale – sorry I can't confirm this,
the only birds I see round these parts are bloody pigeons, and I got fed up with and sold my copy of
Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux ages ago – to frogs crickets owls roosters ravens flies des grillons des
sillons des buissons des poissons des clochettes des brochettes des pâquerettes des fourchettes des
barils du persil des chenils des fournils du crotin du boudin du rotin du terrain it's a real treat if natural
sound is your bag.
Acqua (1992) is, unsurprisingly, sourced exclusively in recordings of water, from babbling brooks to
stormy seas, the plop of a stone thrown in a well to the whitenoise adrenalin rush of a dam breaking.
Monacchi doesn't process his field recordings – who'd want to when the sounds are as acoustically rich
and complex as these? – but he's not averse to shuffling them around and making them play contrapuntal
games. The canonic treatment of drips and splashes is cute, but sits rather uncomfortably with the
acoustic ecology aesthetic he also seems to subscribe to (he's recorded for the World Soundscape Project
and undertaken work for Greenpeace in the Amazon) – if the sounds of the natural world are so beautiful,
why squeeze them into man-made polyphonic structures? Of course, such sonic topiary is nothing new –
remember Stockhausen's duck quacking out the Marseillaise – but as with real topiary you end up
admiring the gardener more than the bush. Similarly, the fact that 1990's La Selva degli Orologi ("The
Clock Forest") comes with a rather snazzy listening score complete with exploratory key ("a sound that
pulses every 4 seconds obtained by slowing down the original tape to 1/4 its speed then treated with an
echo with a frequency of 3 beats per second for two seconds" etc.) allowing you to follow the work's
tripartite structure seems to be designed to impress as much as explain. For my money, I prefer Intorno
all'Origine ("Around the Origin"), which despite its rather forbidding liner notes and their reference to
granular synthesis, algorithms and filtroterodines, is a highly listenable and eclectic exploration of
everything from infinite glissandi to "Frère Jacques". Beautiful and beautifully done.–DW
David Monacchi
PAESAGGI DI LIBERO ASCOLTO
Ants
Ingvar Loco Nordin - Sonoloco
Giovanni Antognozzi’s recording company ants (a new timeless sound) in Rome, Italy, has evolved into
one of the most important diffusers of delicate, high-class sound art, much the same way Björn Nilsson’s
recording company Content has done in Borås, Sweden. I’m writing simultaneously about releases from
both those companies, just by chance, and I’m struck by how well this works for my sensitive perception. I
can easily write one paragraph for ants and then, after a cup of coffee, another paragraph for Content –
and I feel the same.
Yesterday I got some CDs in the mail. This happens most every day, and since I’m occupied with a new
composition of my own plus a work as a criminal investigator, and also spend time with stage
photography and writing poetry, I don’t have all the time I’d like for investigating each and every record
that finds its way to me. Yesterday I went out on my racing bike for an exercise round after nightfall. I
suppose people call me crazy for my daredevil rides through snow and darkness, but my reward is a fit
body and a clear mind – and music never sounds as good as after a shower after a wintry bike ride!
Anyhow, I felt tired, put on David Monacchi’s CD Paesaggi di Libero Ascolto and fell back into gravity in
the utmost sense of auditory pleasure; a pleasure of both scientific and artistic properties. I experienced a
sound art more delicate and innovative than anything I’d heard in years! I thought to myself: “This man is
a genius!”.
I must confess that I’d felt somewhat apprehensive before I’d heard anything from this CD, because a few
of the CDs that have come out of ants have been too simple, too… unrewarding, sporting automated
rhythms and computer loops. That is below standards, and I always crave for the new touch, the different
angle, the ingenious mind. I found all of that and much more in David Monacchi’s CD. It blows me away!
David Monacchi is a sound designer, composer and researcher in the field of sound recording and ecoacoustics. To put it simply, he makes field recordings all over the globe, and he runs the sounds through
machinery. Many people excel in this trade, but very few reach the distinguished results of David
Monacchi.
Monacchi has studied electronic music the Conservatory of Music in Pesaro, Italy, and he has also studied
composition. Among his teachers we find names like Giordani, Sciarrino and Truax. He has taught Musical
Communication, Sound Recording Techniques and Applied Sound Design at the University of Macerata,
Italy. He has worked for Greenpeace, collecting 3D sound samples in the Amazon.All these credits aside, it
is the personal creative act that interests me; that rare moment when a person is in true touch with his
best qualities. How rare it is that a composer manages to get those rare moments down in the binary
codes of a CD. David Monacchi managed that. This is the CD. As I listened yesterday, on my bed after the
bike ride in the Scandinavian midwinter darkness, I kind of drifted in and out of drowsy and semi-wake
states, all the while traveling Monacchi’s soundscapes, freed of my body in my transitory mind state. I was
amazed at the things I heard and saw. I got actual visions or perhaps dreams – live pictures in my mind –
as I hovered inside this enchanted sound world, beginning inside a giant pump-station of Time.
(for the complete review follow this link http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco23/ants/monacchi.html)
(Ingvar Loco Nordin - Sonoloco)
David Monacchi
PAESAGGI DI LIBERO ASCOLTO
Ants
Paesaggi Di Libero Ascolto (Free-Listening Landscapes) is a retrospective of the work of Italian
electroacoustic composer David Monacchi. It features four pieces from the early 1990s which, until 2002,
were presented together at concerts augmented with video, dancing and instrumentai improvisation. The
music sounds fine without those enhancements. These are lucid compositions, vividly recorded and
making creative use of the stereo field.
Monacchi starts with field recordings: clock ticks for La Selva Degli Orologi (The Clock Forest), water for
Acqua, birdsong, insect murmurs and other springtime sounds for Ciclo Circadiano (Circadian Cycle).
These, of course, have been stock sources for much electroacoustic assemblage and manipulation, but
Monacchi manages to transcend this basic familiarity through his aesthetic judgment, scrupulous choice
of material and an ear for effettive dynamics. Particularly impressive are the transitions within each piece,
developments which are achieved through transformational processing, uncluttered layering or sequential
collage. On La Selva Degli Orologi, clocks mutate, echo and alter speed, are stretched or compressed to
disclose the qualities of their sound. Water is heard in many forms in Acqua, from barely audible trickle to
maritime roar and crash. Monacchi leaves it unprocessed but subjects it to careful and revealing design.
The naturai environment of a Montefeltro valley is documented, condensed, arranged to reflect in 24
minutes aspects of the cycle of a day. The culminating piece, Intorno All'Orìgine (Around The Origin), is a
meditation upon the microcosmic life of harmonic sound. It's evolved from minute analysis of a human
vocal fragment and is realised with computer, concrete sounds and the composer's own diaphonic
chanting. Highly sophisticated and laborious compositional procedures result in music that has
immediacy, quirky charm and passages of real beauty. Paesaggi Di Libero Ascolto combines technical
expertise with impeccable compositional judgment and thè musical outcome is immensely satisfying.
(Julian Cowley -The Wire)
David Monacchi
PAESAGGI DI LIBERO ASCOLTO
Ants
Si sente spesso parlare, a vanvera per lo più, di design acustico. Addirittura negli ultimi due anni sono
cominciate a nascere scuole di Design Acustico (vedi l’Istituto Europeo di Design) con sedi in molte parti
d’Italia. Probabilmente solo perché legare la parola Design ad un ambito diverso da quello “industriale”
significa aprire nuove entrate monetarie al mai sazio mercato del sapere, o forse perché più
semplicemente “va di moda”. Il disco di cui vi vado a parlare, invece, non è di moda, non è new age, non
ha nulla a che vedere con le musicoterapie per malattie inesistenti, non fa da “arredamento sonoro” a
nessun centro termale e, per questo…è un’opera stupenda. Il lavoro di Monacchi coniuga in se la più
“Schafferiana” capacità di indagine e di ricerca del “mondo sonoro” fino alla più artigianale e sopraffina
elaborazione elettronica degli eventi acustici. I primi tre brani dei quattro che compongono il disco sono
assolutamente “naturali”, “paesaggi sonori” non modificati elettronicamente. La Selva degli Orologi,
Acqua, Ciclo Circadiano rappresentano la sintesi fra centinaia di registrazioni compiute da Monacchi nel
corso di un intero quinquiennio che va dal 1990 al 1995. L’ultimo brano Intorno all’Origine è invece
un’elaborazione elettronica volta, come specifica l’autore, ad “ esplorare il microcosmo interno ad una
sola nota musicale”. Anche questo disco, così come quello di Albert Mayr ('Proposte Sonore') recensito
qualche tempo fa , è accompagnato da un libretto ricchissimo di spiegazioni sull'opera e sull'arte
dell’autore e soprattutto completato dalle partiture fenomenologiche e sonografiche di alcuni brani. È
importante sottolineare la presenza di un corposo accompagnamento testuale perché pone in se
l’esigenza “didattica e comunicativa” di portare all’ascolto di questo disco anche un pubblico di non
addetti ai lavori, e questo almeno per me, è segno di grande maturità intellettuale ed artistica. Partecipare
all’esperienza sonora messa in moto da Monacchi è uno dei migliori modi di scoprire un universo sonoro
complesso ma incredibilmente affascinante. È Sound Design.
(Riccardo Pallotto - Kathodik)
David Monacchi
PAESAGGI DI LIBERO ASCOLTO
Ants
Ants esce ora con due dischi importanti di compositori italiani, che meritano tutta la nostra attenzione.
David Monacchi il più sorprendente e con un rispettabile per quanto sotterraneo background alle spalle,
ha un approccio al suono che include reale ed artificiale, acustico ed elettronico. Un suono che pulsa e
vive nella migliore tradizione della musica "concreta" ed elettroacustica. Basti ascoltare i 12 minuti di La
Selva Degli Oroiogi tra i ticchettìi degli oggetti meccanici, per carpirne la sensibilità, il gusto
dell'assemblaggio, la meticolosità paziente e sapiente del mettere insieme più suoni. Che nel successivi
brano Acqua diventa esplorazione cinematica e nei 24 minuti di Ciclo Circadiano, un autentico paesaggio
sonoro nella miglior tradizione tanto di Pierre Schaeffer che di Murray Schafer, prassi e teoria della
ricchezza di senso, che sta dentro i suoni concreti del ciclo quotidiano. E che tutto questo poi confluisca
negli immaginifici 15 minuti finali di Intorno All'Origine, piece elettronica di assoluto splendore, che si
chiude tra i riverberi di un canto armonico, è quanto di più naturale potesse accadere in "Paesaggi Di
Libero Ascolto."
(Gino Dal Soler - Blow Up)