[releases] afe50013
aal: urania

Track List:

disc2

1.  Unknown Metal Device  1:02

2.  Dogstar Frequencies  6:34

3.  Translucent Surface  4:48

4.  Glass Glitches  1:49

5.  Benzene Iridescence  4:07

6.  Unkown Metal Device 2  4:57

7.  Obsidian  5:46

8.  Sand-Stained, Sun-Whitened  14:10

9.  Beyond Recall  6:56

disc3

1.  NGC Transmission III  25:21

2.  Womb Litany  8:50

3.  NGC Transmission IV  15:14

composita solvantur

1.  Fase solare  24:19

2.  Eon Celebration  15:52

3.  Unretained Light  12:44

4.  In Exitu  16:21

delicate debris

1.  Home  6:24

2.  Sunny Sunday  9:46

3.  Another Little Glitch in Continuity  1:24

4.  A Minor Renewal  3:08

5.  Happy Insects  4:48

6.  Valley Hill Hammers  1:36

7.  These Are My Words  2:10

8.  A Paper Forest  10:47

9.  Valley Hill Hammers 2  2:38

10.  Valley Hill Hammers 3  2:21

11.  Delicate Debris  7:52

engine summer

1.  Engine Summer  10:25

2.  The Fire's Singing, Too  5:32

3.  Not the Same Deep Water As You  11:12

4.  The Thin Identity You Wear  8:33

5.  Petrified Sunlight  17:03

6.  Per Aspera  10:03

la ruina [sold separately from the box-set]

1.  La Ruina  42:12

Description:

aal is Davide Valecchi from Florence, Italy. He started this project in early 2001 with the precious support of Paolo Ippoliti and Laura Lovreglio [a.k.a. Logoplasm, owners of the S'Agita Recordings label].

Davide had a classical piano training in his childhood and then he focused his attention on electric guitars before finally discovering electronic music in the early '90s.

He released two Cyberpunk / EBM albums as Diagonal Chains and a Drum'n'Bass album as Solenoid. He was briefly part of the Industrial / Nu-Metal band GF93 and he still is the guitarist of Videodiva, a band dealing with a mixture of Dark-Wave, Rock and Electronics.

After the privately self-released Ambient masterpieces "Disc1" and "Inherited and Partially Trasmitted", now available as a remastered double CD-R on Afe, aal's "13" was the very first CD-R release of the newborn S'Agita Recordings label.

S'Agita also released aal's "Dear Dead Days" in 2002 and "In Luce" in early 2003. A Logoplasm / aal collaboration entitled "A Lifetime in a Blink" was also relesead on A La Verticale De L'Étè, a S'Agita Recordings sublabel.

aal was conceived as an embodiment of a 'stream of consciousness', in which memories, dreams and portions of reality are mixed and cannot be separated. Electronics, concrete sounds and data flux try to evoke these elements following an istinctive course.

The "Urania" box-set collects five full-lenght albums played, recorded and produced by aal between 2000 and 2004: "Disc2", "Disc3", "Composita solvantur", "Delicate Debris" and "Engine Summer". All music was carefully remastered by aal and Andrea Marutti between 2006 and 2007 on purpose of this release.

"La Ruina", the sixth disc which completes this limited edition box-set, is sold separately and is only available on demand: each copy is personally finalized by the author himself.

Here's a description of each and every album according to aal's own words:

"Disc2" represents a collection of sounds recorded between 2000 and 2001 that can be considered the very first attempts at defining a sound entity called aal. Synths, effect modules, tape recorders, microphones and samplers were used following an instinctive approach in order to depict abstract places and feelings.

"Disc3" deals intensely with the concept of altering streams of sound in real time. These tracks are mainly improvised music whose base consists of sound sources like radio and television transmissions, shortwaves and analogic tape recorders filtered live by sound processors and samplers. They were recorded at night assuming that the captured transmissions were coming from space.

"Composita Solvantur" is a four movements composition each part of which can be considered as a static description of the same place viewed from a different angle. This place is definitely elsewhere, even when it represents a place of the mind. "Composita Solvantur" was titled, as a tribute, after the book by the poet Franco Fortini. "In Exitu" is the title of an hallucinating novel by Giovanni Testori and stands here as a tribute, too.

"Delicate Debris" represents a deep rework of sound sources produced by acoustic instruments like piano, guitar, flutes and mandolin and it deals with the essence of loss. These sounds testify a research into sound creation, the will to discover new methods of intervention on aural documents in order to create new meanings, new places, new emotions.

"Engine Summer" was recorded right after the 2003 S’Agita release "In Luce" and it is fed by the same inspiration. Memories and their remains are the subject of this album: memories that are not necessary real. Memories that enlighten the golden path of reminiscence. The title is a tribute to a John Crowley’s novel by which this album is partially inspired.

"La Ruina" is a collection of ten voices of water captured with stereo microphones along different locations of the stream of the same name. This little river's voice has been my discreet companion during my childhood years.


Reviews:

"Davide Valecchi, the man behind aal, started in 2001 with playing more experimental music, after years of dabbling around in various other musical genres. In the early days of his career he released music on S'agita, which is still regarded as one of the more exciting labels from Italy, and sadly no longer around. These days Valecchi releases on Afe Records, and they are now responsible for this five/six CD-R set, which looks professional and lovely, but of which apparently merely fifty copies exist... Altogether this is a great work, showing a strong development, and aal venturing into different kinds of music, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Let's wait for the next box, to see where he leads us then."
Vital Weekly [more]

"...la musica di aal spazia in molteplici territori, i cui riferimenti vanno dai Coil ambientali ai Nurse With Wound di "Soliloquy For Lilith", utilizzando fonti sonore di ogni tipo e attraversando molti dei sottogeneri della già indefinibile musica sperimentale. Se a tutto questo aggiungete che esiste un sesto disco, ordinabile separatamente e contenente solo ed esclusivamente il suono dell'acqua di un ruscello ("La Ruina", fiume che dà appunto titolo al disco), capirete come alla fine l'operazione di riunire e pubblicare tutti questi lavori in un'unica scatola sia stata tutt'altro che futile. Se aggiungiamo ancora che la suddetta scatola, in piena tradizione Afe, è curata sin nel minimo dettaglio in una rispettosa imitazione delle vecchie copertine di Urania degli anni '70 (la fantascienza è certo non solo un hobby per Davide Valecchi ed Andrea Marutti), il mio consiglio di acquistare tutto il box – sempre che siate di ascolti vicini a quelli qui lungamente citati - è quanto più possibile sincero."
Sound and Silence [more]

"...aal riesce nel tratteggiare paesaggi sonori ora glaciali e inquietanti, ora delicatamente romantici, ora di una mantrica immobilità, sfruttando una tavolozza di colori piuttosto ampia tra pastosi grumi di glitch, lugubri rielaborazioni di sound sources (con "Disc3" che evoca i momenti più spettrali di certi Coil), profonde elaborazioni di suoni acustici ("Delicate Debris"). Ma Valecchi stupisce anche per la maturità dell'impianto concettuale che sottostà alle sue composizioni: "Composita Solvantur", omaggio all'omonimo poema di Franco Fortini, è un gioco di specchi che si manifesta in 4 lunghissime ed (e)statiche suite che sono "descrizioni di uno stesso luogo da angolazioni differenti". Puro, immobile ambient-droning, all'apparenza, in realtà prisma cangiante e mantrico che plasma al proprio volere la materia di partenza..."
SentireAscoltare [more]