LE STANZE DELLA TRASCENDENZA

The main characteristic of the early works of Alio Die consist in applying the electronics to acoustic and natural sounds. This album should be the second part of a trilogy including started with the excellent "The Hidden Spring" as he writes on his website, nut he has missed to tell us if a third part has ever been released.

"Le Stanze Della Trascendenza" can be tranlsated as "The Rooms Of Transcendence", but with the word "stanze" that can be translated both as "rooms" and with the poetical meaning of "stanzas". Probably the second meaning is the correct one. The tracks which compose this album has been composed and recorder between 1994 and 1999.

"Alternate Realities" is a familiar terminology for who has read the books of Carlos Castaneda. I don't know if Stefano Musso was thinking to that when he composed this dark ambient track. Probably it's only self-suggestion, but I hear echoes of world elements in the bells and the untuned flute in the background later followed by congas. It's a very meditative track. I don't know how much influenced by the Yaquis sorcerers, but it has surely something magic inside. I think to the ritual in the cave in Ken Russel's "Altered States".

Whoever has spent a summer night near to the Mediterranean Sea, in Italy or in Greece, knows that sleeping can be quite difficult, not only because of the heat and the mosquitos, but also for the chaos produced by the legs of cicadas, but when this noise is not too loud their sound can be incredibly relaxing. "Cicada's loop" is a 4 minutes track based on that sound accompanied by major chords of God knows which instruments. Cicadas "singing" is a sort of natural mantra. Try to believe.

"Il Fondo Del Pozzo" (The Bottom of The Well) starts as a drone. The reverberation effect adds a sensation of water, but there's more in this well. The increasing noise makes me think to the forge of Sauron, or at least to a frenetic hidden activity in the deep, as in Lovecraft's prose "something laying in the dark behind the ground".

"Melancholic Roots" is full of water which is the one of the four alchemical elements most used in progressive electronic, I think. The mood doesn't change with what seems to be an acoustic guitar with a loop of itself overlying. After 3 minutes and a bit of silence it restarts with vocals (oohs and somebody human, hopefully) on a single minor note The chord remains the same while natural noises of animals fill in a pool of water. I have the impression that this sound is produces by a wet finger over a crystal glass but I can't be sure. Something changes with the water coming back at minute 10:30 of this longest allbum's track. Some birds or similar appear at minute 13 and they add a bit of variation to this very static track. The jungle noises increases and after some monkeys and birds in the water I can expect a crocodile. There are vocals too. I don't know if it's somebody singing and sequenced. The bells at minute 16 add a dark mood to what is now clearly a sequence of I think C- and G#..It proceeds in this way until the end.

"Desire" is a strange track. A sequence of two chords with a sinusoidal progress in the volume. Another meditative ambient moment.

"Molecular Dance" is the closer. The original source of the sound might have been a guitar or another strings instrument, maybe an oriental one. This song is based on pauses and chords of short duration probably to symbolize the dance of the title. Also in this track the volume has some variations but less regular than on the previous track. Only in the final another instrument is added, then it slowly fades out.

What this album misses is a bit of continuity between the tracks so to appear more like a collection of songs than like a part of a trilogy concept. For the rest it's a good one for who likes this kind of ambient electronic music.