LP – Stray Signals

Raw and spectral sequences welcome us to ‘Over the last land’ – the first track of eleven included in The Right Half, a work by Davide Luciani and Jorge Quintela. The production – completed between 2020 and 2024 in Porto and Berlin – is born from a magmatic process of improvisation, collage and overdubs, each crossing its own sound sources through extensive and sensitive manipulative passages. The rhythmic foundations and digital cracks built by Quintela are reshaped by Luciani’s acoustic engineering, who superimposes timbric layers, and designs sound corridors where feedback becomes the common thread. The sonic architecture of the release is developed mainly through guitar and bass amplifiers, cabinet and stereo PA systems, thus absorbing multiple spatial identities that oscillate between harshness and environmental resonances that infiltrate the interstices of the recording. It is in this hybrid acoustic dimension that the work finds its most disruptive force, moving seamlessly between startling and monolithic constructions of rare intensity. The mastering entrusted to Giuseppe Ielasi – a key figure in the Italian electroacoustic scene – gives the material a formal coherence that never betrays the chaotic nature of its origin. Ielasi manages to preserve the harshness while maintaining an overall readability that allows the listener to orient themselves in the sonic labyrinth. His expert hand balances the extreme frequencies and dynamic peaks, creating a listening space that amplifies the tension between control and drift. The titles of the tracks – ‘São Px’, ‘Santa Caterina’, ‘Rio’ – draw an imaginary geography that crosses languages ​​and numerical codes, suggesting translucent narratives where the literary mixes with the mythological. In ‘Ariadne’s Thread’, the reference to Ariadne’s thread becomes a metaphor for the listener’s path, guided through an acoustic maze that does not promise easy exits. Each track is a fragment of this sound map, where climates oscillate from torrid to arctic, from humid to dry, in a highly emotional development that escapes any stabilisation. The release imposes itself in the form of an acute exploration of liminal spaces, where noise meets ambient, where structure dialogues with chaos in a moving conversation. Like its unresolved halves, the album invites you to get lost rather than find yourself, transforming listening into an act of navigation through unexplored sonic territories.

 

Davide Luciani & Jorge Quintela – The Right Half