Ryan Francesconi
Views Of Distant Towns

THE REVIEW

There is an impalpable curtain between the gaze and the profile of these distant cities.
There is a sense of perspectival depth just barely veiled by the softness that envelops it, clothing the fluid spread of the sounds in light and constant vaporisation.
There is a meticulous arrangement of delicate and numerous sound tiles that move within this fluidity, giving shape to views that seem to draw from images settled in a place situated between the intimate penumbra of memory and the airy vastness of imagination.
And there are voices that appear, materialising naturally, assimilated into that flow, almost as if they were composed of the same substance as the sounds.
The flow, generated by the intertwining of acoustic sounds with shifting electronic shadows materialises, in the encounter with those voices, the ghosts of songs.

In the meticulous drafting of his sound palette into an emotional fresco, crossed by an elegance never insubstantial or mawkish, Ryan Francesconi, a Californian musician dedicated to an electronic tinged with lyricism, entrusts a large band of collaborators and guitars, strings, piano, very light percussive textures at times traversed by the evocative breath of a trumpet, with the organicity of sounds destined to combine with field recordings and the digital element, to bring his third solo album to life.
The voices, which traverse the album delineating faint melodies, whispered in English and Japanese, are by Sonja Drakulic, Moira Smiley, or Lily Storm.

I read that part of his inspiration comes from the pages of Haruki Murakami and that he toured in Japan. Even Plop, the label that releases the album, is based in Japan.
And during the listening of these ethereal atmospheres, dense, however, with an undeniable evocative strength, of a luminosity at times clouded by a veil of melancholy, it seems to recognize the traits of the delicate yet proud elegance that is the distinctive feature of that culture.
But the distant cities we observe with our ears have uncertain architectures, indecipherable profiles, and are probably closer than any geographical distance could establish.
In those cities we have been, or we will arrive, even without ever having set foot there. The world is so big and so small when part of the emotions that pass through it whirl on a metallic disc.