CD + book – SUPSI

Within audio-art and sophisticated music research there are many productions based on the crossing over between different art forms and subjects. It is a symbiosis of sounds, images, storytelling, theories and philosophies, that offers a different gaze from the rigor of the academies and avoids the insignificance typical of some contemporary music lacking in thought and critics. “The echo coming from far always melts the ear”, this is the poetic syntheses of the project made by Xabier Erkizia, the author of Il Rumore Lontano, published by Department Education and Learning of the Professional University School of the Italian Switzerland. He seems aware how the context of a contemporary work, as the thoughts, the culture, the history and the emotions and everything turning around the sounds, is as important as the sounds, that can hammer “foggy” into the listener, until it becomes more “close” and “transparent”, undoubtedly clean and alluring. The musicians whose education (classic or modern) is more academic, due to their attitude are not always able to see this beauty and show some difficulty to deal with codes different from the often asphyxial “technical” analyses of a composition. This is exactly what happens with the field recordings, a “genre” originated by some scientific needs, especially in the anthropological field. The field recordings later follow a different evolution, having an aesthetic nature capable of evoking different places, routes and moods. In this release Erkizia presents a sound notebook made by several train rides, from Locarno station to Veracio in Centovallina, and then on different trains near Bellinzona, Chiasso, Locarno and some funicular railways. Due to the level of the details and the quality of the audio captures, these recording always have very elegant and sometimes grandiose vibes, even in the moments of absences, or in the brief interviews and in the announcements to the passengers. “In the foggy hug offered by the distance, the far noise is the nearby music”, this is the comment of the Spanish experimenter. His words hammer into us as an immaterial gentle touch leaving us in a state of suspension and reconciliation. The project was meticulously arranged thanks to the supervision by Lorena Rocca and is sided by a large textual section, which hugely describes the passages, landscapes and the different experiences of making.