LP + booklet – Die Schachtel

The Color of Pomegranates, the second work of Soviet director Sergei Parajanov, is a film from the end of sixties, now a cult movie from a time when it was difficult to be an artist in the USSR out of favour with the regime. The film tells the life of an eighteenth-century Armenian poet, Sayat Nova, it is as static as a painting with a narrative that is reduced to the essential, although revealing – through hypnotic sequences and symbolism – how life was in those times. We are faced with dreamy and imaginative settings – these are the same years of ‘Fando y Lis’ by Alejandro Jodorowsky and of surrealist cinema. This is the source of inspiration for Damāvand, namely Gianluca Ceccarini (electronics and electroacoustics elements) and Alessandro Ciccarelli (electronics, electroacoustic elements, trombone, cornet, trumpet, tuba and flugelhorn), revisiting the film’s structure in episodes, divided into six tracks and which are full of ethereal ambience, electroacoustics and noise elaborations, sequences of world music that are close to the musical tradition of the Middle East. The lyrics feature the poems of Sayat Nova recited in Persian by Nahid Rezashateri, a graphic designer and photographer who grew up in Iran and then moved to Italy, where in 2018 she co-founded with Ceccarini the collective SARAB which focuses on photography anthropology, short films and media art, with a special focus on themes of identity, memory and landscape as a knowledge process. Visual culture is the target of the two Italian musicians and experimenters, who chose to release with Die Schahtel, the Milan-based label, who since 2003 have focused on electronic, concrete and avantgarde music, along with sound poetry and who pay special attention to the visual aspect of each project (not only for the design and the packaging). Indeed, the challenge is finding new ways to plan and produce limited media such as vinyl and cds, that recognise sound as an art form and platform for critical discourse. As Long As You Come To My Garden is a limited release of only 300 copies and comes in high quality black heavy vinyl, hosted in a printed inner cover and dust jacket, contained in a silk-screened PVC case, with an accompanying booklet – this is one definitely not to miss out on.

 

Damāvand – As long as you come to my garden