[releases] afe014rcd
never known: once in a lifetime [remastered edition]

Track List:

1.  A Waiting  3:21

2.  Through the Gate  6:50

3.  Day Two  8:55

4.  Father and Son  4:17

5.  On the Beach – Part One  4:52

6.  Once in a Lifetime  4:04

7.  E.Z.  3:44

8.  Pulvirentia  1:50

9.  Closer  3:25

10.  On the Beach – Part Two  5:33

Description:

Never Known is the earliest music project of Andrea Marutti, best known as Amon and as Afe label owner.

Andrea began his experiments with music in the early '90s using tapes and concrete elements. A few years later he also began to use synthesizers, samplers and other electronic devices, and founded the Lips Vago Digital Studio.

Several releases of Ambient / Dark Ambient music were published by labels such as Eibon Records, Amplexus, Drone Records, Taâlem, etc. on CD and other medias.

He is also responsible of many other projects dealing with different styles of electronic music ranging from Lo-Fi / Weird / Cheap Electronica to IDM (Wolkspurz & Ramirez, Lips Vago), Dada / Noise / Non-sense (Spiral).

Recently he also started recording and releasing experimental/ambient tracks under his own name, in duo with Nimh / Giuseppe Verticchio as Hall of Mirrors, and again in duo with Andrea "Ics" Ferraris as Sil Muir.

Following "Dawn of an Era", "Once in a lifetime" was Never Known's second release. Recorded between August 1994 and August 1995, it was published by Murder Release as a C46 tape in September 1995.

The tape was subsequently re-released on CD-R by Afe in March 1999. For this new edition, all tracks were remastered from the original tapes by the author in March 2007 at Lips Vago Digital Studio.

The album consists of ten short ambient numbers mostly created with poor equipment which included several tape recorders, cheap microphones and objects. Basic synthesizers lines were subsequently added to some of the tracks.


Reviews:

"...The music on "Once In a Lifetime" is darkish, in the sense of "primitive" - it seems like we're in a place where many taboos circumscribe existence. These tracks are sketches, grand vistas indeed, but of regions you really ought not to be in. Some of these sketches are more filled-in and detailed, like "Through the Gate", out of whose haze of drone emerges a soft, distant tribal chant with powerful suggestive force. This is clearly ambient of an early vintage - Enovian, one might call it, recalling the low-key but high impact work Brian Eno created on albums like "Apollo" and "Music for Films" - big on ideas and low on ostentation. It takes you somewhere utterly foreign and new."
Sonomu [more]

"...This album consists of dreamily-ritual excursions through ancient time and primordial elements. It starts with the two trancey-minimalism drones ("A Waiting" and "Through the Gate"), introducing us to liminal spaces. "Day Two" represents the beginning of a voyage through the origins and the primal-ontological foundations of life. It is made of expanded organic chords floating in deep distance. Almost without transition it directly carries on the completely sonic-black mental-scape with its strange metallic "doomy-like" echoes and high-pitch fantom-like frequencies. From dark austerity it passes to a beatific state of ravishement with the intimate and dreamy "On the Beach"..."
Prog Archives [more]