ANDREA MARUTTI

After fifteen years of making music apart from each other, Andrea Marutti and Fausto Balbo's paths crossed in 2005, and since then they have been working every now and then on this release. The album "Detrimental Dialogue" is their first collaboration, and it contains explorations of various types of analogue and digital synthesis. If you are not yet introduced to that part of experimentalism, yes, there is more then 'just' analog or digital. To quote from the press sheet: additive, subtractive, physical modeling, FM, phase distortion, granular, etc. The 48 minutes of this release are divided into four tracks, entitled "Winter", "Indulge me", "Set-Back" and "Troubled Elephant", and with the best will in the world I couldn't explain these titles to you. But rest assured that while listening to these tracks I have tried to figure it out. The drones and ambient parts slowly fade you in and out (of an uncertain state) of consciousness, while the intrusive experiments in minimal noise, glitch and pure waveforms rip you out of there and force you to feel the here, the now and reality; this latter in all its beautiful and confrontational aspects. Through the use of effects, the sounds that are used on this album ? and then mainly those noisy escapades ? are put into a really nice perspective. The stereo image as well as the depth have an exceptional extra dimension, which makes the album as a whole interesting for a) modular sound nerds (you know who you are) and b) people who want to hear proof that there is more than your mind can handle. It's going straight into my collection, next to Robert Piotrowicz' "Lasting Clinamen", and the additional mini-poster with the music-making aliens and insect-shaped speakers by Stefano 'Sicksoul' Rossetti is getting an honorary place on my studio wall. For inspirational purposes? Or just to space out!

Expansive and glorious!

Andrea Marutti's 2008, " The Subliminal Relation Between Planets - Live In Archiaro", carries on with the exploration of environmental music that is both like "modern" life itself, part machinery, part natural.

His musical language blends both sonic experiences, but unlike some contemporaries, the real deal here is the melody lines underlying always the subtle noise/music ambients, expansive and permanent slow paced transitions, enhancing the project's name & goal to its full potential.

A minimalistic but highly charged and emotional, four piece live performance, extending up to an hour and 14 minutes+-.

Each composition derives into the other, the intense and almost invisible melody lines are flawless in their magntetism, which kept me "hooked' all album long.

Massive, low keyed, slow paced, attractive and perfectly achieved "live" performance. In short flawless!

****4.5 PA stars. A "do not miss" project!

Eloquent encounter!

In my newly aquired prog/electronic findings, Andrea Marutti´s name shows up constantly. Going on by different "facades" like Amon, Never Known or Hall of Mirrors and his solo works as his collaborations with other electronic musicians like Aidan Baker, NIHM, among many others.

This 2010, "Detrimental Dialogue (With Fausto Balbo)" obviously is one of those collaborations.

Both musicians know their game, it shows and adds up to the clear counterpointing between both personal musical languages. Marutti´s idiom although it deals with noise like structures the same as Balbo´s, his lines still possess a close nature to music as we all understand it. On the other hand Balbo´s expressions are close in range to the raw electronic experimentation, like german electronic pioneer Conrad Schnitzler.

So, expect droning landscapes of swirling enchanting noises, deep unstructured and dirty frequency waves going back and forth between "strange and hypnotic" melody lines, some poignant basses here and there and lots of "blips", "beeps" and ¨tweeks".

Creative and diverse in its songwriting, a more than balanced performance like collaboration, a unique musical proposal and original in its raw-noise constructions. Friendly but not accessible in its musical composition results.

For Prog/Electronic, Krautrock and RiO followers and maybe some other curious cat!

****4 PA stars.

— First review of this album —

Tri-ton is among the last releases published by the excellent underground Russian label Observatoire (Observatory Records). This effort can be appreciated as a reunion between three musical personalities in the field of sonic dark ambient music. The sound morphologies provided in this release are extremely intense, mesmerizing, complex and ultra immersive. Five Elements Music (solo project of Exit in Grey's member) starts the musical ceremony with a wavering bleak sound manifest based on large buzzing and massive monophonic droning textures and others subterranean and disembodied cycled resonances. Gorgeously tripped out and physically absorbing. From his side, Andrea Marutti delivers a primordial and cryptical magmatic array of lugubruous droning frequencies, moving bass lines and dense sonorous psych-acoustic effects. Deep sense of spaciness. In the musical direction of the most efficiently ecstatic and vertiginous sound materials from Andrea Marutti's past releases as Amon and Never known. A Dantesque and ravishing entrance into the demonic and golden unknown. This music completely reaches you on a new orbit. Jim Haynes closes the album with a definitely abstract and mesmeric archetypical hellscape. Tri-ton provides an homogenous musical orchestration made of substantial darkly evocative dronescapes that will ravish fans of swooshing doom atmospheres. Twisted mystical backness.

Two electronic wizards and sound alchemists, Fausto Balbo and Andrea Marutti (Amon, Never Known, Hall of Mirrors) have unified their respective musical universe to create a rather unique, innovative and polymorphic electronic album. In itself the musical signature offers a dense and dynamic interaction between sci-fi, fractal sound projections and virtually cosmic surrounded synthscapes. The opening theme offers a synthesis between pure abstract electronic interferencies, spaced out lo-fi keys and icy pop-ish electronics. Indulge me provides a luminous beatific soundscape in search of the absolute quietness. It slowly involves into a metaphysical sound hallucination. Set-Back explores mysteriously evocative, detached soundscapes slowly moving in deep distance, punctuated by electro-acoustic motives, cosmic noises and transversal flux. Troubled Elephant closes the album with various abstract sound manipulations and processual micro-sound textures. Detrimental Dialogue is a vertiginous- cathartic musical experience which entirely renew the whole kosmische synth subgenre due to unusual sound combinations. A really ambitious collaboration and absolute electronic masterpiece.

— First review of this album —

This is the first album Andrea Marutti published under his own name, without using pseudonyms or projects names. After having written and produced a handful of mysteriously-slow moving droning efforts, Marutti apparently decided to publish personal materials that are much more into post-industrial, nuclear, bionic electronics (Maurizio Bianchi...). Consequently and as suggests the title, The Brutality of Misbreathing is an intoxicating, menacing and claustrophobic experimental electronic release. It starts with the mighty, utterly dark and austere Through Half Closed Eyes and its sublime, nightmarish abstract atmosphere, using different concrete and ambient sound sources. It carries on with the cavernous, heavily blackened & echoing piece Early Morning Failure. Choked by Emptiness is my favourite on this one: a marvellously evocative piece that implicitly alludes allusion to the decaying- dissolving aspects of humanity, announcing the apocalyptical spendour of the eternal fire. The piece Absence Leaves an Echo which closes the album is an heavenly-sonic dronescape that emerges into blackness. Metaphoric, narcoleptic post-industrial music at its very best. An other great and hidden facet of Andrea Marutti's fruitful musical production.

— First review of this album —

Turra is a single long conceptual piece that can be thought as a derivative / sound musical approach to the concept of askesis, I do not mean aescetism but interior activity or communication of the soul and the will which are beyond ordinary codified communications. In fact the initial material of this recording features the human voice. In this experimental piece, the voice is not perceived as a vehicle of language and is not involved in words (narratives). This is not a thinging voice but a spiritual respiration of the soul and of the body, in the service of life under cathartic proprotions (functional liberation of the spirit). To be precise, it is an investigation into the geneaology of the soul through deep visceral emotions. The original voice source of the practitioner is treated in studio by electronic equipments and effects that give to it an otherwordly-droning flavour. For the listener this spiritual-cathartical exercice turns to a fascinate meditation on physical sounds. A musical quest for cultivating the soul, a musical quest for freedom. Music about the deepest thruths of life.

Performed and recorded live in Archiaro (Catanzaro, Italy) on August 2007, ?The subliminal relation between planets presents outstanding sensory-emotionally ecstatic droning textures with a great feeling of floating sensations. The concept fit perfectly with the symbolical significant musical harmony of the spheres (Pythagorean Greek theory on mathematical principles). In this magic live and largely improvised performance built on synthesised sounds and electronic treatments, Andrea Marutti invites the audience to a sacred mission connected to other worlds.The album seems to redeem the world through art. The opening musical scene provides a certain exalted and peaceful psych electronic chant built on massive droning waves, punctuated by natural and noisy amplified effects. Angelic and long sustained melodies are floating on the surface. The Pulsating Silence is a vigorous tranced out excursion throw sonic noises mixed with field recordings and fragmented dronescapes. Wonderful Ostentation contains completely absorbing echoing metallic lines inter-twined with cosmic synth drones are reminiscent of early Cluster / Eruption works. The album closes with deep resonant synth-scapes creating a type of hypno-magnetic attraction on the listener. This live recording is an ecstatic-aesthetic peak experience that transform our perception of sounds and forms.