AA.VV.
On How A Picture Can Sound

This is not even a “record”. In the sense that I downloaded the mp3s directly from the record label's website, where I ended up due to the usual series of concatenated coincidences. And along with the 12 tracks, I found myself with the respective jpg files of the artworks that the pieces are inspired by. Because, as the title suggests, and as stated on the “I Dischi della Lepre” website, this is what it's about: a collection of twelve unreleased tracks inspired by as many works of art.

It is an initiative, though not unreleased, curious and it seems very much in line with the spirit of the “..small independent record label dedicated to those who appreciate uncommon sounds” that realized it. Some chosen works are by historical authors, quite famous and reproduced in a lot of art history books. Others are the work of young contemporary artists, whose existence I was unaware of. And among paintings by R. Magritte, R. Motherwell, Y. Klein, E. Munch, photos from the inevitable Cindy Sherman, I was pleasantly surprised to find among the sources of inspiration (chosen by Strotter Ins.) a photograph by August Sander, from that immense work that is his “Uomini del XX Secolo” (highly recommended to purchase the book, it’s worth every penny they ask you, if you find it).

And the music? Well, you can listen to it after a very quick and free download. These are mostly rarefied tracks, generally electronic in genre, with rare electroacoustic inserts, vaguely ambient, sometimes traversed by some crackling sampling, sometimes by the saturation of a frequency, often slightly “dazed” as if wrapped in a fog. For example, the one I’m listening to that Maxanto created, thinking (or staring) at yet another Klein Blue, is a trail, uncertain and hesitant, of 4'.19'', which moves in a sort of bare sonic corridor, releasing small spirals of sounds that extinguish like candles, and reappear as tiny muffled clangs. Even the faint, brief hint of the bounce of guitar strings is sucked into the void. Or into the absolute blue that made the American painter famous.

I wanted to point out the opportunity to access the listening and “viewing” of the tracks because I liked the simple tone and the atmosphere you breathe when entering the site of “I dischi della Lepre.” Which in the meantime (“On How A Picture Can Sound” is from 2003) has published the album by a certain Vonneumann, with the programmatic title “Switch Parmenide” (everything that Parmenides and skateboarding have in common).

In short, if you have a few free minutes, take a look. Nothing that can change your life, but, thank heaven, not even another zealot who believes they’ve understood everything and pours onto you the overflowing sewer of their "ideas": you may have noticed, lately, they are sprouting like mushrooms.

Have a nice day.