Hey, Luciani

(via Bruce Levenstein)

https://boomkat.com/products/elettroencefalogramma

boomkat blurb:

‘Elettroencefalogramma’ scans the full breadth of solo experimental composition by Antonino Riccardo Luciani, revealing a strong, prescient, frankly shocking line in mind-bending, fathoms-deep work with tape and early, pre-synth devices. Awarded unprecedented access to the polymath composer’s archive of inter-disciplinary work, Andy Votel follows his pressing of Maria Teresa Luciani’s ‘Sounds of The City’ with this first compilation survey of her sibling’s vast catalogue. The set falls deep within the label’s remit of reissued and previously unreleased work by overlooked and undocumented pioneers of 20th century sound, revealing a distinctive mix of material that nods to contemporary, tape music, neo-classical, jazz, electro-acoustic and counterpoint composition.

Drawn from original tapes recorded during the 1970s, ‘Elettroencefalogramma’ spans the heyday of Luciani’s work, before synth music was popularised. In this sense it’s worth noting Luciani’s links with Teresa Rampazzi and the pioneering electroacoustic group NPS - and namely Serenella “Serena” Marega - with whom he shares a strong affiliation toward embracing the possibilities of new music at the dawn of an unprecedented sonic epoch. There’s a sense of being in transition between worlds and eras in the opening blend of melancholy strings and bubbling electronic rhythm ‘Battery Farm’, and likewise the cranky mixture of bestial growls and dissonance in ‘The Zoo’, while the rattly rhythm of ‘Offices’ uncannily recalls Trunk’s recent issue of ‘Mechanical Keyboard Sounds’ from the modern day. But Luciani excels at quieter, introspective styles, as with the flute-led vision of ‘Desol 2’, and most remarkably in the stygian, primitive drum machine pulse and clammy string drones of ‘Forest of Chimneys’, which is surely crying out for imagery of Satanic mills, while the rupturing tape of ‘Bombardment’ sets him firmly in a lane of advanced Italian noise that connects him to Gruppo’s Roland Kayn and Maurizio Bianchi. 

Needless to say all of the material compiled here is taken from records that are incredibly rare and which were never intended for commercial release. It serves as a multifarious toolkit portfolio of Luciani’s most introspective, intimate, individualistic and uninhibited studio experiments - compiled and assembled in collaboration with the artist himself, whose vast and incredible oeuvre will hopefully now be made available to a new generation of listeners.

A.R. having a little moment, with this other reissue coming out last month:



release rationale:

The great fame of Antonino Riccardo Luciani, a musician and composer from Palermo, is due above all to his work for television and to one in particular, namely the music for the Almanacco del giorno dopo (Almanac of the Coming Day), a famous program that has been broadcast on the first channel of RAI - Italian Television for over twenty years. Chanson Balladée, this is the title, is for many people an indelible memory of a television now disappeared and radically changed, for which Luciani has often composed wonderful themes and soundtracks of great value as Tecnica di un colpo di stato (Technique of a coup d'état). Agonia della civiltà (Agony of Civilization), on the other hand, is part of his more experimental and abstract works, such as Inchiesta sul mondo (Inquiry Into the World) or Desol, and reveals the less accommodating side of the Sicilian composer, at work with tense atmospheres, hammering percussions, Musique concrète, magnificent orchestrations and bitter reflections on society. Originally released in 1972, the album is paradoxically more relevant in these complicated times. Titles such as Esodo di popolazioni (Exodus of Populations), Catastrofe sociale (Social Disaster), Disfacimento ecologico (Ecological Decay), Metropoli in agonia (Metropolis in Agony) o Dramma dell’evoluzione (Drama of Evolution) foretold our future almost fifty years in advance, accompanied by timeless music.


some other library bits and bobs by A.R. and aliases
















love this cover