Ginevra Bompiani (w/ Caterina Barbieri and Tomoko Sauvage) - Il Calore Animale /  Francesco Cavaliere -  Zoomachia Disc 1

After some brilliant releases by Soundwalk Collective over the last few years, Dischi Fantom returns with the first two installments of their new Sussurra Luce series, Ginevra Bompiani’s ‘Il Calore Animale’ (Animal Warmth), combining texts by the writer with new musical pieces by Caterina Barbieri and Tomoko Sauvage, and Francesco Cavaliere’s ‘Zoomachia Disc 1’. Bridging the realms of experimental music and text-based practice, each dives headlong onto the world of fable and myth, weaving singular worlds to be occupied and inspire wonder. Issued in highly limited vinyl editions of 200 copies, accompanied by very special booklets with both Italian and English text, while entirely of this moment, both stand as inspiring reminders of how so many of us first encountered truly creative and groundbreaking uses of sound.   

Building on their diverse activities ( exhibitions, installations, performances, etc.) across numerous artistic disciplines  - exploring the new trajectories of photography, sound, and the visual arts -  the Milan based cultural platform Fantom’s recording arms, Dischi Fantom returns with two new remarkable LPs, Ginevra Bompiani’s ‘Il Calore Animale’ (Animal Warmth), combining texts by the artist with new musical pieces by Caterina Barbieri and Tomoko Sauvage, and Francesco Cavaliere’s ‘Zoomachia Disc 1’, both of which make nods to  Fratelli Fabbri Editori’s “music fables” -  a series of pre-recorded fairy tales - the mesmerized  Italian children during the 1960s and 70s, combining illustrations by various painters with the narration of Silverio Pisu and other actors, places against original music by the composer, pianist, and singer Vittorio Paltrinieri, who wrote, orchestrated, and sang, all of the parts. While part homage, both of these works are visionary and entirely contemporary, pushing the bounds of experimental music into surprising and truly engrossing zones. Issued by Dischi Fantom as the first two LPs in their new Sussurra Luce series, curated by Francesco Cavaliere, in highly limited vinyl editions of 250 copies, accompanied by very special booklets with both Italian and English text, once again the label brilliantly blurs the boundaries between sound art, text-based sonorities, and the efforts of the contemporary musical vanguard.

Ginevra Bompiani (w/ Caterina Barbieri and Tomoko Sauvage) - Il Calore Animale

Ginevra Bompiani is most likely unknown for fans of experiential music. In Italian literature and thinking, however, she is highly regarded writer, editor, translator, essayist, and academic, whose fiction, particularly, is informed by linguistics, feminism, and literary theory, and verges on the surreal and the fantastic, making her interdisciplinary effort, ‘Il Calore Animale’, collaborating with two of the most singular voices in contemporary experimental music - Caterina Barbieri and Tomoko Sauvage - entirely logical.

The LP, ‘Il Calore Animale’ comprises four short stories read by Ginevra Bompiani, recorded at her home in 2018 by Francesco Cavaliere, that were originally published in her volume ‘Le Specie del Sonno’ (The Species of Sleep) in 1975 with an introduction by Italo Calvino, where he stated “The landscape created by her prose recalls those paintings in which peaceful figures are asleep in a quiet wood, or a solitary house, or any place where the senses can dim and reason's guard is dropped.”

The texts that Bompiani reads dive into the mystical world of myth and allegory, bring traces of the ancient world and mind alive in the contemporary realm. Against the delivery of her voice, the four pieces are threaded by musical pieces composed by Tomoko Sauvage and Caterina Barbieri. Sauvage’s two contributions, “I frutti” and “Il serpente d’acqua”, were composed, performed, and recorded at INA GRM – Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, and build upon her broader body of work incorporating the sounds of amplified water, drawing haunting sonorities and textures howling from unknown depths. Barbieri’s two pieces - “Il calore animale” and “La pariglia” - other the other hand, encounter the composer returning to the classical guitar, unfurling rippling arpeggios, patterns, and melodic elements into the world created by Bompiani’s words.

Beautiful and deeply original, while calling the mind back to both the ancient world and earlier moments in cross disciplinary collaboration like Fratelli Fabbri Editori’s “music fables”, from which the inspiration for Dischi Fantom’s new series was drawn, Ginevra Bompiani’s ‘Il Calore Animale’ (Animal Warmth) is a stunning and deeply inspiring body of work. Issued by Dischi Fantom in a highly limited vinyl edition of 250 copies, accompanied by a very special booklet with Italian, French, and English texts, this one is highly recommended for anyone captivated by myth, sound art, sound poetry, and experimental music at large.

Francesco Cavaliere -  Zoomachia Disc 1

First emerging during the mid 2000s in the field of experimental electronics, the Italian born, Berlin based artist, Francesco Cavaliere captivated us back in 2021 with ‘Viridescens’, his brilliant duo with Tomoko Sauvage issued by Marionette. With a handful of noteworthy releases having appeared since, he now returns with ‘Zoomachia Disc 1’, a remarkable fable bridging the territories of spoken word and electronic and electroacoustic composition.

For the better part of the last 20 years, Cavaliere has woven intimate tapestries of sound from a strikingly singular pallet of processed source material that have resulted in startling abstractions. It is this departure point that underscores ‘Zoomachia Disc 1’, a radically new way of working in the artist’s output. A musical fable written, composed, and performed by Cavaliere, the tale unfolds in two acts - ‘Il grillo ventriloquo incontra Setha la mantide’ (The ventriloquist cricket meets Setha the mantis) and ‘Atta e Volma nel regno delle api di vetro Ossax’  (Atta and Volma in the Ossax realm of glass worker bees) encountering a range of insect character in various guises: a cricket, spider, and numerous mantis, ants, and bees.

Against the fable’s text, delivered by Cavaliere with an ever-present sense of drama, the composer unfurls wild and playful, almost hallucinatory electroacoustic interventions, pulsing patterns on synths, fractured ambiences, and fleeting rhythms and melodies, bumbling to surface like watery springs, before receding from view and returning again.

Strange and wonderful in the best possible of ways, infusing experimental music with the child like wonder, playfulness, and mystery that was often encountered within popular culture during the 1970s, but rarely since, Francesco Cavaliere’s  ‘Zoomachia Disc 1’ is one of those rare creations that leaves you feeling more curious than when you began. This fantastic LP is issued by Dischi Fantom in a highly limited vinyl edition of 200 copies, accompanied by a very special booklet with Italian and English texts. Highly recommended!