[reviews] afe127cd
andrea marutti & fausto balbo: detrimental dialogue

Essentially, "Detrimental Dialogue" is a conversation between two complete synth-heads, each tossing whizzes, whirs, crackles, tones and drones back and forth at each other, burying sounds into deeply hollowed-out stereo channels, and constantly twiddling their creations with effects and manipulations.

The two Italian collaborators delve deep into the digital and analog, exploring tones to extended lengths and offering up a lot of them for your ears to try and track down and make some sense of.

It's not always an easy task to do so - this music, though full of very long compositions, is paced very quickly. There are sections to be followed and it seems like the two are definitely on the same page for the most part. But the overall swiftness in shifts almost encourage quicker, less attentive scans.

The songs sometimes have a hard time making it all the way from A to Z. Second track "Indulge Me", only gets to X or Y at the most... unfortunately cut short right in mid-synth-motif after 12 solid minutes. This kind of structuring keeps the music from painting full, complete pictures or telling any kind of meaningful story for you to follow along with.

Less a voyage, more a ticket to the observatory, and maybe that's what Marutti and Balbo are really going for here anyway – this feels much more like a jazz performance, be it a heavily synthy, digital noise-jazz performance. It's an exhibit of two very highly skilled synth-noise architects in an improvisatory dialogue that remains an interesting listen despite its babbling incoherence.

Also, I have to mention the artwork. The front cover posted above there is maybe the least interesting part of a much bigger, much better and more awesome poster found folded up inside the CD. Almost worth it for that alone... luckily the music's a treat, too.

[Crawford Philleo]