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

"Detrimental Dialogue" was born from the combined forces of Andrea Marutti and Fausto Balbo, veterans of the Italian electronic scene, the one focused on experimentalism and sound research.

The eclectic duo delivers a refined, almost elitist work for delicate palates. Four very long tracks (for a total of 50 minutes) digging into the chasm of self and coiling you up into distant echoes, in which the material evaporates and condensates into deadly miasmas.

The process conducting to the accomplishment of "Detrimental Dialogue" is rather particular: after the recording of the tracks in separated studios (between 2007 and 2009), the two met for the collective mixing.

It's a difficult, hostile and paradoxical record, gathering an infinity of different styles, apparently undefinable, in which, however, the cosmic legacy of Tangerine Dream and of lots of Kraut Rock stands out. Melodies are left out in favour of rarefied ambient pads. Make way to sound experiments, filters, wave forms...

It was previously remarked that this is not a CD for everyone, and not even something you can appreciate at the first listening. It's a work without assurance, or, better, a product whose only assurance is the uncertainty of an hallucinatory journey along a mysterious way, the goal of which is equally unknown to the pilots (Marutti and Balbo) and to the passengers (the listeners).

Along the sonic wake it'll happen to be disturbed by distorted mixers, coiled up by space sounds and by the winding synth vortex stretching into a soft melodic opening. And, further, frequencies wandering into deep space and caught almost by chance, telephones ringing, vintage videogame noises, metal clangours, and more.

An evocative album, undoubtedly, to travel beyond the horizons of commonplace.

[Marco S]