*Limited Edition 150 copies* Ring! is an artist album by Francesco Cavaliere and Dick El Demasiado created during A Week From Monday 2023, an artistic residency organized in Umbria by Viaindustriae Publishing and Holydays Festival. The residency involves a week-long research and production phase, in which the artists divide their time between Foligno's industrial zone and the mountain village of Scopoli with the intent of exploring possible points of contact between visual and sonic artistic languages. Ring! is the result of an immersive listening experience, involving the manipulation of field recordings taken during a historically inspired jousting tournament. The artists shared the experience of listening and recording, while further manipulation and production of the tracks was carried out individually.
Francesco Cavaliere opens Il fuso del cavallo infilato nell'anello (20' 5") with a vocal reinterpretation of the Bando di Giostra—a text traditionally read aloud to announce the horse race, typically recited into a microphone by a designated actor on the day of the event, in the complete silence of a crowded stadium. He then focuses on the stark solemnity of the race itself, during which a certain kind of restless silence takes center stage, as the ear tunes in to the essential sounds of the stadium: the horse's gallop, the lances striking or missing the rings. This creates a long sequence of speaking silenceswhere, from time to time, the chatter of the crowd suddenly breaks through.
In Never Be The Saddle (15' 50"), Dick El Demasiado works with editing, repetition, layering, and delay as subtle yet decisive gestures, creating a vaguely unsettling and out-of-the-ordinary sound experience. His interventions are so discreet that one may not immediately notice them—or possibly never notice them at all. Here, the main elements are saturated sounds, such as the amplified voice of the race announcer, the cheers, drums, and trumpets, which are occasionally interrupted by the same speaking silence that we hear in Cavaliere's piece, a defining sonic element of the experience.