Labirinto Verticale

Hosted in the usual silver-silkscreened deep black cardboard with a crux-shaped maze (the image is the 16-th century Labirinto figurato by Francesco Segala) as the main image, on which the silkscreened clear plastic sleeve. The latest work, after six years of silence, from Italian composer, performer and publisher (Black Letter Press) Claudio Rocchetti, and a welcomed return on the Die Schachtel imprint after the brilliant Another piece of teenage wildlife (2008), Labirinto Verticale (Vertical maze) takes its origin from the 4-years of collaboration of Rocchetti with the Parma-based Fondazione Lenz, a contemporary theatre research collective/organization
Immersed in their very fertile milieu, inspired by the writings of Hölderlin and Calderon de la Barca, and orbiting around the concepts of Memory, Sedimentation, Presence/Absence, Rocchetti produced several hours of music, a selection of which is collected in this album, that marks the n.5 in the internationally acclaimed Die Schachtel’s series “Decay Music”, perfectly fitting its mission, which is to explore the more “intangible”, “decomposing” (in a re-generative sense of the term) borders between experimental sound and “proper” music with a special focus on the more interesting experiences of the contemporary Italian scene
For sure the series of delicate pieces that composes Rocchetti’s Vertical maze are of intangible, almost “phantasmic” quality (in Rocchetti’s words), a sort of alchemic “opera al nero” characterized by a ghostly use of fragments of the human voices, that surfaces in a subtle maelstrom of otherworldly sounds, created, manipulated and decomposed with the use of cassette tapes, re-recording sessions reminiscent of Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room masterpiece of sonic refractions, feedbacks, sounds either found or collected during the rehearsals or the theatrical workshops and shows and as a finishing touch Rocchetti’s own voice used to imitate artificial sounds or instruments and further re-mixed in a game of sonic mirrors that transports the listeners in a completely new concept of melancholia, hauntology, and at times on the verge of discomfort, managing anyway to remain in the space of a gratifying and accessible listening experience