CD – Firework Edition

This work is based on recordings made in Lausanne, Switzerland, in an ancient school of anatomy that has been turned into a library. They were edited by Francesco Meirino himself at the Shiver Mobile studio between November and December of 2011. Hesitant audio emissions – rather dark iterations, dense with granular drones – are interweaved with atypical frequencies and occasional percussive elements. Patterns are organized without particular conceptual grounding, something made explicit in the unfolding of looping passages and pauses and by the more reactive captures – forming an unusual digitalist mix (although at these latitudes the average listener is likely to be prepared for any kind of union or contamination). The recordings were originally made by Michael Esposito, an experimental artist and investigator of metaphonia (Electronic Voice Phenomena), a methodology or pseudo-discipline concerned with capturing – using a recorder or the radio – words and coherent sentences that do not originate from the surroundings or from radio stations, but “messages” supposedly arriving from alien locations. Without looking too deeply, metaphonia seems vulnerable to “undesirable” interferences, but can be a fertile area for artistic exploration, something Meirino skilfully reveals. If we look in the right places with a rigorous methodology we might find that the true paranormal is our ability to activate subtle associations, to transfigure the everyday, cleaning it of its banality.