Listening Group

New RSS "Listening Group" project from my friend, Anthony Ferraro:

Emerging from progressive rock circles, the conservatory, and other experimental quarters, Italian ambient music coalesced in the fertile Milan avant garde during the mid 1970s, with outsiders like Gigi Masin (Venice) proving notable exceptions to the rule.

The music was eclectic, but throughlines emerged: sacred minimalism, concrete pastoralism, ethnographic syncretism. The interior of the Italian musical psyche found a voice in home recordists and lapsed academics, living room mystics and tape itinerants. Advances in audio tech meant that experimentation could happen outside of the formal studio, though established producers like Franco Battiato kept those doors open, too.

The result was a steady bloom of recombinant strains across the fidelity spectrum. DIY self-releases (e.g. Masin's Wind) were as foundational as more professionally engineered efforts like Messina & Lovisoni's Prati Bagnati del Monte Anologo. And while these technological affordances were available internationally, the sociopolitical hazards of Italy in the 1970s – prolific domestic terrorism, cascading crises of state legitimacy – might have caused more of an inward turn. Where German kosmische was fueled by a still vital futurism, Italy had long exhausted those fumes.

Perhaps that's why this music resonates so much in the 2020s. A failed technocratic utopianism gives way to mass disillusionment. Human beings the world over, exhausted with exteriorizing themselves on the internet, rediscover interiority. For those looking to step off of modern treadmills and recalibrate their attentional field, these early Italian ambient works are a balm.