Paolo Angeli & Hamid Drake
Uotha

LA RECENSIONE

Summer 2004, Sant'Anna Arresi, it's hot. As every year, behind the Nuraghe facing the main square of this small town in southern Sardinia, a prestigious music festival takes place at night: "At the borders between Sardinia and jazz". On stage, an unusual pair of musicians: American drummer Hamid Drake and Sardinian guitarist Paolo Angeli. The former is a sultan of rhythm who has explored the possibilities of percussions far and wide, transporting us with a palpable Afro spirit. The latter is an alchemist of invented sounds thanks to his prepared Sardinian guitar, sailing between acoustic and electric to the point of becoming unrecognizable. The result of the evening?

A bomb of magical, anxious, multifaceted, dense, ancestral, swirling, experimental, disorienting, archaic, impetuous, disorganized, crazy, obsessive, unexpected, edgy sounds. Sounds without a land, without a culture, if only hinted at. Sounds that wander from east to west to nocturnal urban suburbs, and then fade away in the cry of a muezzin with a guitar that has by then transformed into an electric viola. Sounds that impact the listeners, dragging them into a whirlwind of constant rhythmic tension with increasing anxiety. Sounds that also become suffering as in the intense "Beslan" dedicated to all the children who are victims every day of the foolish wars of adults. Sounds comparable to navigation in the dark without a compass, following the stars and instinct. Sounds getting lost between New York, Africa, and Sardinia with a thousand and no common denominator.
And the mind wanders, drifting, finding no destinations, no points of reference, no borders. And the journey gets lost in the sound space. But there is no confusion. Thus, small and fragile, the idea is born that this is an invocation to the sky under those stars, the same as millennia ago. An earthly sound that merges with the night. And expands ever more. In the background, every thought is lost.

That's why I don't even know what this music is and how to describe it better than this. Moreover, I don't even know if it makes sense to look for a name, a label when it is evident that from this meeting emerged rebel, free notes whose only sensible classification should trace back to the spirits of its two creators and the strange and unique encounter of that night. Thus, beyond every word, only listening matters, only the sounds of that evening matter. You will find them in this small, great, and surprising CD.