Luciano Cilio
Dell'universo Assente

This album catapults me into the air... but not with a kick in the rear... it's like going up, you know, in a hot air balloon??? Yes, just like that...
(Aristarco Scannabue)

- I can certainly say it's an important album: avant-garde, even if it can be compared to certain expanded and metaphysical experiences of rock, jazz, world music, and even new age, an album of great tense silences and great concentration, captivating because it's never cold, but on the contrary, at times it's also light and dreamy, without being mere background music. Always highly studied, far from the somewhat naive spirit of Sorrenti, you can tell Cilio is an author conscious of the history of cultured music, while not belonging to that environment. These are truly the Italian albums to rediscover, well above the progressive seventies fluff now reduced to collector's fetishes, as misplaced as the comparison might seem. But the years are the same (this is from '77, right?), yet that is often museum-stuffed stuff, this is still living music. (The red scale - not registered)

- After your recommendation, I struggled to find it, but as soon as it was in my hands, I started to listen listen listen... (Lewis Tollani)

- Aristarco, I'm listening to it now. I came back to thank you. And it's not just a formality: I probably would never have discovered this album without this little page. And it would have been a real shame. Magnificent. Bye and thanks. (odradek)


The review by Aristarco Scannabue of the album in question, submitted to DeBaser on March 9, 2006, has been commented on by 7 people, including the reviewer, despite having been read, so far, by about 290 passersby.
I am one of them. Despite the brevity of Aristarco's text, which includes a remark by Jim O'Rourke, and thanks also to the exchange of comments, I obtained an album whose existence I was unaware of.
This is obviously not another review, it's not an attempt to fill the informational gaps around a musician who deserves visibility that the market will never grant him.

This is a public thank you to Aristarco, who, as he himself said in the comments, ("...well I didn't know what to say, I haven't been listening to that kind of music long") simply wanted to bring to our attention an album and a musician that evoked a very understandable form of respect in him. He summarized it like this: "...and I didn't want to spout nonsense..."
Well, I'll do it.

This is a public appeal to all those who have never heard the album, who, due to the hectic and incessant rotation of the homepage, haven't read Aristarco's page and, like me, didn't even know about Luciano Cilio and his work.
To those interested in listening to music that seeks to explore and express, along with the mysteries of sound, its ability to create a world, also those carried within us by the particular quality of silences that "play" and resound thanks to it. Even in the chaos that inhabits us.
To those who, as I mentioned elsewhere, much prefer to be "consumed" by music, rather than consume it.

This is yet another, sad realization of the effects of a system of commercialization of music that leaves a small Milanese label the task of documenting the work of unknown Italian musicians. Like Cilio, who, situating themselves in a specific historical moment and also working within the suggestions that crossed it, have left some fragment that will last much longer.

This is a handshake, belated but vigorous, to a departed musician, whom I immediately felt close to.
It's a small, insignificant drop in an ocean of signals. It's an attempt to spark curiosity in others that could generate, in some, the same amazed wonder that I experienced. And Aristarco. And Lewis, and... you?


In "More info" you will find a series of news and opinions that more than compensate for the shortcomings of this little page. Others here: http://www.die-schachtel.com/html/ds7_reviews.htm
The samples, never more than in this case, can do little in the face of the particular quality of the rarefaction in some pieces. But, as usual, I've also added a handful of seconds for each piece.