13/12/2024
" It is an interesting combination of musical talents....An excellent example of an electro-acoustic work. " (review on Vital Weekly)
GIANCARLO TONIUTTI & DEISON & MASSIMO TONIUTTI - DUE SCRITTI IMPERFETTI (CD by 13)
The Toniutti brothers still live in Udine, where they have their studio. Over two years, they worked with Italian musician Deison on the three pieces on this CD. It is an interesting combination of musical talents, even when it made me realise I don't know much about them and how they work. Perhaps I think I know about the Toniutti brothers. I always think of them as creators of long-form installation pieces, wood, ropes, and metal bits they play, each in their unique way. Did they ever work together? That's a question for another day. Cristiano Deison, I know, as someone with a guitar
and many effects, but maybe there's not much of this here. There are three pieces on this CD; the two bookend pieces are pretty long, and there is a short, three-minute track in between. It curiously sounds exactly like I would expect it to sound, and you're wrong to think I am disappointed; I love it.
There's an almost poetic thing on the website that is too good not to quote in full: "Pâte de verres, invisible spikes and wires scrape, the blend grows and gets together tapping strings, with ribs and stretchers and blowing on the borders, on excited foils, bows and hairs are skipping, slats and staves rebound, self-built air streams, gliding tiny machines, buzz and dives, fast, faster in the space like tape and knot, stripes and stitches, and fine-tuning timbres, using chisel and timbre and detail and hundreds more modes and means, alloys and montgolfiers, groups or clusters slide away to the boundaries and details tell tales." That sums it up for me very well. To me, that
says the music is very much this large acoustic object (or more) to be plucked, tapped, bowed, scraped and whatever else one can apply to get sound out of it. It was not a single time to play it, but I imagine they recorded a lot of times and then, via a complicated process, edited, mixed, reduced and expanded the material. The music has beautiful density, long, complex structures, and clear-cut sections. But it remains obscured music also, part of that density, I guess, which makes it very mysterious. If anything, the three pieces remind me of most of Giancarlo's solo work, and his input might be significant. But that's not to say the other two are helping hands only. It's hard to figure out who did what here, but the result is fantastic. An excellent example of an electro-acoustic work. (FdW)
