Fausto Romitelli
Audiodrome

Four orchestral pieces are featured on this CD. There are many reasons for interest. Let us review, in quick succession, some of the ideas found in these pieces:

"EnTrance" (1995): a soprano is equipped with two microphones, one on the left side of her face for inhaling, the other on the right for exhaling. She intones a 15-syllable text taken from the Tibetan Book of the Dead and determines with her vocal behavior the instrumental behavior of the ensemble of 16 musicians. A musical ritual to facilitate entry into a state of trance.

"The Nameless City" (1997), the same title as a story by H.P. Lovecraft. Emulation of the Doppler effect (like the siren of an ambulance approaching and then receding) by means of an ensemble of 15 strings divided into three distanced groups: the ones on the sides are tuned a sixth of a tone above and below the central group.

"Flowing down too slow" (2001): here Romitelli employs sampling techniques, distortion, interference, and mixing «adopted by digital artists such as Aphex Twin, Dj Spooky, and Scanner». Two instrumental groups (a string quartet + sampler) stand on the sides of the stage; in the center, percussion and double bass. The central group «proposes a sound object that the opposing ensembles read, analyze, progressively distort, and mix with new objects that in turn are fed into a loop destined for catastrophic drift».

Thus spoke Fausto Romitelli, a composer who injected massive doses of elements from the unsanctified territories of techno and rock into the body of "cultured" music. Someone who understood a lot and left us too soon: he passed away from a severe illness in 2004, at the age of 41.

For the three pieces described above, mere listening on a CD is not enough to notice all the compositional subtleties: at a superficial listen, they seem rather conventional pieces. This, however, cannot be said for the opening track of the CD, "Dead City Radio. Audiodrome" from 2003. Here tonal fragments at the beginning, even reminiscent of Strauss, soon clash in sound panels in violent opposition.

Interferences and distortions run through the piece, thanks also to the presence of a distorted electric guitar that bursts in with its explosive charge after three minutes. Radio signals from a dead city, contamination, sound saturation: like the saturated colors on the cover image. Towards the end of the piece, the jack is removed from the electric guitar, which is touched with fingers to create disturbance. The traditional sound of the orchestra and the extra-cultured sound derived from rock thus give rise to an unusual form of hybridization and introduce us to the sound world of this fascinating composer.