Julia Kent & Barbara De Dominicis – Parallel 41

Julia-Kent-&-Barbara-De-Dominicis---Parallel-41

Baskaru, [CD+DVD], deluxe digipak, 9 audio tracks + 1 movie, 2012, English

Parallel 41 runs over both Naples and New York, the respective homes of the duo Julia Kent and Barbara De Dominicis. This work reflects an engaging project in which cello and voice have been recorded in different places with different acoustics. Among these are an ex wool factory near Naples, an abandoned tunnelin Alto Adige, a former fort near Venice and a farm in the Piedmont countryside. The recording process is one of the distinctive traits of this work and the field recordings give a specific “value” to the music. This value is explored further in the DVD, which contains a documentary movie by Davide Deonardi (who also improvises visuals for Parallel 41’s live concerts), entitled “Faraway Close”. The two women discuss the places and their sounds, between (over)views of the cities and recordings of (before and during) the concerts. The sounds are always related to the movie, either implicitly (described but not heard) or explicitly. Can this be defined as a conceptual music travelogue? Somehow, yes. The historical connections between the two cities remains as a backdrop, with the parallel functioning as an ideal shortcut to connect the two artists. The work talks about music production in terms of the proximity and distance between the two collaborators, whose major point of contact in the end is only the latitude they share, which establishes the type of climate they live and absorb, before expressing those roots in their music.