[reviews] afe045cd
raffaele serra: europe endless

In 2000 Raffaele Serra, one of the most distinguished but still unappreciated italian electronic musicians, finally found the new home for his releases and became a resident musician of Afe Records.

This label, which was founded by Andrea Marutti (Amon, Never Known), has a huge catalogue of international productions, connected with all facets of modern electronica, offering a lot of small edition releases from great musicians like Telepherique, De Fabriek, Bad Sector, Dronaement, etc.

Despite the fact that Serra has various side projects like Five Thousand Spirits and Talharion, his solo works are also all very different. "Europe Endless" is his 9th album released on Afe, and one of best recent works in his impressive discography.

It contains the sound-portraits of various european cities: Barselona, Zurich, Amsterdam, Cologne, Paris, Prague, Wien, Berlin (divided into two tracks - as I suppose, considering western and eastern parts), 13 tracks total.

The diversity of each city atmosphere is mirrored in tracks structure: styles are varying from cold experimental electronics and dark ambience to the minimal technoid pulses and even hip-hop rhythms.

Well, I think that this album is less experimental than others but nevertheless interesting because of evokative soundscapes. What is notable, there is absolutely no affected, false national "colours", so the composition follows cosmopolitan way of "imaginary travel".

This album is sincerely devoted to changes, waiting, journey, hope... the most important and remarkable thing out of it all.

[IEM]