Italian Ambient
With limited hindsight, these years are difficult to historicize. Certainly they constitute a period of increasing referentiality, with artists climbing another rung up the ladder of abstraction. To the casual ear, the result may sometimes be ungrounded, vertiginous; for the deep listener, overtones from past and present meld into a rich and resonant whole.
Old luminaries re-feature, among them Walter Maioli, Roberto Musci, and Gigi Masin, with the latter producing the finest work of his four-decade career. Donato Dozzy continues a prolific arc begun in the middle aughts, shining both solo and in collaboration. And newcomers like Caterina Barbieri and Marta De Pascalis get repeat features in this third installment, their budding discographies replete with both homages and provocations.
If we are to attempt to essentialize Italian ambient music, we might say something about unabashed sentimentality, or unflagging eclecticism, or drift. But this is to generalize where particularities contain the richness, each work a portal to this inner life, that contingent moment.