MATTEO UGGERI

"Un'estate senza pioggia" is a mysterious album by Matteo Uggeri, and it starts off with the beautiful sounds of lightly amplified electric guitar, but various organic sounds soon appear within the soundscape. Most of the sound is electronic, but has a strong base in organic texture that really makes everything seem comfortable and homey.

Although the buzzings, clings and clangs, slightly disrupting resonances, beautifully organic field recordings, musical instruments, and glitching elements are present here, it all seem to lack the coherence of Uggeri's later work. It seems weird to say that, this being experimental electronic music, after all. But it is hard not to feel that this all seems much more random than "The Distance" or "Autumn Is Coming, We're All In Slow Motion", which both seem to focus on keeping each field recording in its own situational context within the music. The recordings here, coupled with instrument choice and tone, don't seem to really fit.

This is all still very soothing, and intermittently creepy music. It's definitely not bad at all, but not as structured properly as the albums following this.

"Autumn Is Coming, We're All In Slow Motion" is another collaboration project of Matteo Uggeri and Andrea Ferraris with some other musicians included. I first started listening to Matteo Uggeri's music on "The Distance" and from his participation on the wonderful group effort "Kapnos" by Meerkat, so the music on this album definitely took me by surprise. The two previously mentioned albums were bleak and slightly horrific with tinges of insanity and potential powers of destruction. This album, however, is entirely beautiful.

One thing about Uggeri's music that I've found interesting is his fantastic use of field recordings. It's not a new concept, but I feel like Matteo Uggeri really puts these elements up front, making them feel the same way that lyrics do in other types of music. Footsteps either on gravel or walking through puddles , a wobbly ceiling fan, playing children, bicycles, and birds are a few among the many sounds present on this album, and it really sets the atmosphere. These elements converge amazingly, making this a remarkably organic-sounding electronic experiment. All of these organic elements are accentuated by beautiful and bleak organic instrumentation as well, such as lightly played acoustic guitar, droning accordion, weeping cello, and spiritual percussion.

The music here is almost reminiscent of some of the more mellow recordings in the post-rock genre, but has much more of a mysterious feel that most artists attempt to create but ultimately fail at. This isn't dangerously unsettling or disturbing music, but definitely more of a relaxation type. This album is the sound of human life, and is great for sitting back with eyes closed and a glass of tea, and simply living.

The Distance is droning ambiance at its best and is very evocative of despair, hopelessness, and paranoia, and even the name of this album (meaning the amount of space between two things or people), really matches this album's sound.

Beginning with the sound of distant fireworks, emphasizing the albums title, all these tracks lead on with nearly the same constant drone throughout, sometimes sounding semi-Eastern like a sitar, but is most likely and electronically manipulated guitar. Various other sounds make the cut here, such as the skipping of stones and dropping of rocks into a lake or brook, and the infernal buzzing of bugs and cave dwelling creatures, as well as the dripping walls and the echoing deep of the caves themselves. The calmest track here is the finale, "Return", which sounds like motoring back to sanity after a journey through what very well could have potentially been the most mentally disturbing trek seen through anyone's mind's eye.

This music is very visual, and really paints a mental landscape of disorientating complexity with minimalistic soundscapes.

In Matteo Uggeri's creative musical production, this new collaborative album can be considered as the intimate companion of Un'estate senza piogga. In this new effort, Matteo is seconded by musicians and friends such as the guitarist Andrea Ferraris, the cello player Andrea Serrapiglio and Mujika Esel on vocals and piano. The sound geologies reveal an unique medley of cinematic post-rockin ambiences and languorous acoustic dreamlike atmospheres; punctuated by a vast array of concrete microsounds. The eco-acoustic-organic attributes of Uggeri's music are put a step further, delivering sensuous soundscapes. The guitars of Andrea Ferraris are constantly evanescent, fragile and shimmering. The rumbling cello and the abstract piano lines give to the ensemble a touching melancholic mood. All musical ingredients and sound orchestration work like a chamber ensemble. Some compositions achieve a rare level of emotional intensity (Steps on Leaves...) and some distinctive pop-ish melodies (Friend Sleeping... ). A very cohesive album with lof of ideas and introspect moments. More accessible and less experimental than older works, this one can be appreciated by a larger audience. Listen to Autumn Is Coming and you wil discover a symbiotic, expanded, breathy musical experience.

Un'estate senza piogga is a charming, poetical and intuitive electronic rock album released by Matteo UGGERI with a few guest musicians and friends such as Andrea MARUTTI or Giuseppe VERTICCHIO. The poetical operation explores memory traces and micro-events of the past that find a serene peace in the interior-nostalgic experiences of the self. The concrete-natural noisy sequences taken from the "cinema" of everyday life is manipulated by the imagination to create a sort of visionnary emotional experience. The artistic-musical facets try to capture the symbolic meanings of objects, situations and events. The resonant, intimate and echoing melodic guitar lines meet veiled, cloudy windy noises, spectral distant voices, skeletal micro electronic tones and delicate piano notes. The music is a contemplation, a gradual dialectic about the natural silence, ambiguity and about the poetical, lyrical states. The visible world becomes a pure and simple poetical action which can be called "charm". The state of innocence is its condition of existence. Un' estate senza piogga is a very absorbing, moving, luminous and communicative musical experience. A great introduction to Matteo UGGERI's original world of sounds.

The Distance must be listened to as a collaborative project between Alessandro Calbucci (loops, guitar manipulations...) and Matteo Uggeri (Field recordings, electronic treatments). With this new experimental droning ambient based album, music allows us to face unconscious reasons of human existence not so much in a sense of diversion but as a means of speaking about life. The sensorial-neurotic fundations of moving-expressive drone waves admits implicit links with alchemical inclinations (a sustained attention given to the relationship between macro-cosmical and micro-human bodily elements). The first piece called Last brings temporative harmonic sound forms that slowly move on burgeonning physical noises. The tremendous minimal-chording vibes suggest heavenly sounds. Under starts with cinematic-sonic projections of natural sounds of water, winds, fallen stones that are progressively covered by langurous, deeply introspective droning movements. Some strange-eerie instrumentations also appeared in the background. Celestial harmonies of the earth. The third piece (there) reiterates the same schema but it's growing into a loud and demential orchestration that conjuges a lot of dissonant / consonant sounds. The last piece features peaceful, serene and cloudy electronic textures, a poetical transport to a complete other world. As most of Matteo Uggeri's personal musical works, The distance provides mental sound genalogies that should be experienced in ascetic- quite meditative listening exercices.