PER UNA SCULTURA DI CESCHIA

Ever since my good friend Steve talked about moving together with this album, I've felt the need to listen to it. Again and again.....It's a couple of years old friendship I've had, which now is beyond the rather peculiar opening meeting that first left me on the verge of delirium.

Birth of the Sphere, or Nascita della Sfera, created a tightly woven piece of art back at the tail end of the 70s, one that takes library music to another level altogether. I've seen many folks affectionately talking about it as one of the great obscure library albums, and if there's anything I am absolutely certain of, then it's that I'll never in a million years bump into this baby down at the local library! Not even the hippest book borrowing businesses will have the balls to play this.

Based around the Italian sculptor Luciano Ceschia (1926-1991) this album wields equal amounts of theatrical avantguarde electronics, freak folk and something else entirely. Not altogether indecipherable, the record seems to have a gentle way about it that very eloquently takes you through melodic "authentic" sounding music, recalling an acoustic take on Jerry Garcia's work for Zabriskie Point - to more daring electronic experiments, that I personally feel are closely related to a certain Italian sound. You hear it in Pierrot Lunnaire's RIOesque Gudrun, Battiato's Fetus (more outspoken on Pollution and the subsequent albums though), and then again it's also present in a remarkable more dark, brooding and sawing album like Claudio Rocchi's complete mindf*ck Suoni di Frontiera. It's a brand of electronics that not unlike The Floyd did on Saucerful of Secrets with organs - very slowly larvals it's way through the music like a mucus engulfed metal snail. The wonderful feel of this musical trade is the equivalent of diving straight into a pool of soft wet clay. Thick gooey gelatinous - words that all very aptly convey the real force of these electronic critters.

A small note should go to the audiophile connoisseurs out there though. I know some of you, and my guess is that you're most likely going to hate the production side of things. Per una scultura di ceshia at times sounds like it was recorded in a rather large plastic bucket. Especially the rare moments, where the more earthly businesses of saxophone, guitar and drums appear, takes on this absurd cartoonish cardboard sheen.

With 7 people behind the vocals, including head honcho Carlo Barbiera (keyboards, vocals, composition), you can also expect quite a vocal affair - though not in the way you probably think. Bouncing back and forth through sections of soft talking, voices and what genuinely sounds like a mic stuck in a room with two people having the most life altering conversation of their lives - the focus of this thing lies elsewhere - more specifically on the panoramic electronic scenery, saxophone experiments and droopy rainy day silhouettes.

When I hear this album now, it reminds me of Steve, who at the moment probably is celebrating his birthday(Godspeed comrade - feel the potatoes)............... Funny how some records remind you of people, and what's perhaps even more funny, is that music this mad and mosaic actually is capable of reflecting genuine personality in a kind flattering manner. For me personally, I have always had a lust for bewilderment, to get lost and hopefully stay there for a bit. Maybe I'm mad, but to me the backstreets and jungles just have so much more swoof and zing than all the world's highways combined. This facet of me is multiplied a thousand times when it comes to music, and I suspect that Steve most likely understands this better than any. Have a good one buddy! I'm sending you a box of koalas in the winter.

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