Artist : Alio Die & Aglaia
Title : Private History Of The Clouds
Genre : Ambient
Year : 2009
Date : 05/24/2009
Bitrate : VBR kbps
Tracks : 06
Label : Infraction
Source : CDDA
Encoder : Lame 3.97
Length : 66:57 min
Size : 87,6 MB
Tracklist:
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01.Cumulus Congestus 09:43
02.Stratus 09:42
03.Radiatus 08:31
04.Nimbus 13:39
05.Perlucidus 13:13
06.Cirrus 12:09
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66:57 min
This album has a total limited pressing of 900 copies. CD is housed in a Japanese mini-LP style gatefold
wallet.
This has been in the works for almost 1.5 years. Is there finer ambience (save Oophoi perhaps) coming
from Italy outside of these two acts? And a collaboration to boot. Nice. 900 copies in the Japanese style
mini-lp matte gatefold sleeve. Beautiful layout courtesy of the ever-impressive designwork of Pyhai.
Infraction Records curates this new entry to the already considerable body of collaborations involving Alio
Die. There have already been communings with the likes of Robert Rich, Mathias Grassow, and Vidna
Obmana. Here, though, Stefano Musso's fellow-travellers are lesser known but closer to home. Aglaia is
an Italian duo with a trio of albums on his Hic Sunt Leones label; Gino Fioravanti and Gianluigi Toso come
trailing credentials in therapy, writing, painting, and teaching, to say nothing of alchemy and ortho-bionomy.
In contrast with Musso, who has fully two decades of musical endeavors behind him, they're comparative
novices. But you wouldn't have thought it. Theirs is a music whose apparent stasis enfolds within it
endless subtle micro-variations. They bring with them from previous HSL releases an appealing
aquatic/amniotic sound dimension, characterized by a combination of electronic sounds (analogies as the
sleeve notes would have it) and processed acoustica moving as if in virtual circular breathing. Slow waves
of soundflow suggestive of psycho-acoustic energy (if you're a believer, otherwise just go with the flow)
come with peripheral fragments of sonorities, carried on the wind, drifting as if at the edges of sleep,
recalling the way echo plays in open landscapes.
That's part of the method of this animist collective's historical unfolding of its subjects' textures and
trajectories, yielding a series of luminous aerated tracts. Animists see a spiritual force residing in every
element of the physical world. Nature is believed to be alive, imputing an inner life to leaves, lakes and the
like. Dwelling on Private History of the Clouds brings this to mind before even entering its audio world,
particularly in light of Alio Die's predilection for "passion, nature and awakening" and Aglaia's for worlds of
feeling ("mondi sensibili," as a previous album was called). But, lest this kind of talk scare off those averse
to nature-hugging, note that the musical Grace inspiring this project is more a familiar of Pandit Prath Nan
and Brian Eno than of Wyndham Hill and Hearts of Space.
From opener "Cumulus Congestus" (heaps of cloud masses) to "Cirrus" (wispy curls) the history unfolds
couched in way-up-high, pure aetherial tonefloat, with odd bold blares of Fioravanti's analogies, swathed in
showers and sundry susurrations of the lower earth and skies released from capture within his
accomplices' arcane devices. There's a sense of holism across the album's six movements, though
variations are clearly discernible. "Stratus" (blanket-like layers), for example, bears the characteristic
medievo-gothic stamp of works in Musso's recent Castles sonorisation series - the familiar drones and
loops and field recordings providing a subtly evolving canvas for trails of elegiac psaltery. While "Radiatus"
(broad parallel bands converging towards the horizon) takes more from the airy/aqueous elementalism of
Aglaia's Three Organic Experiences and Sacred Waters. "Nimbus" (generating precipitation) is serenity
itself, albeit drenched. And "Perlucidus" (a layer with small spaces through which clear sky is visible)
extends itself into 13+ minutes of freefloat, hanging oneirically in a light mist of treatments. At its more
initimate, listening to the chronostatic electro-acoustic-glides in blue of Private History of the Clouds feels a
little like watching dust particles in a room illuminated by light rays - variously filtered by alterations in
shutter angles - now suspended almost immobile, now gently agitated by soft breeze.
Finally, in describing Alio Die's work, it's hard to avoid reaching for the meditative or devotional, invoking the
sacral or incantatory. That's only part of the resonance here, though, and Private History is notably less
solemn than the Alio Die signature style, perhaps borne elsewhere by Aglaia's energies. These will be
labeled drone works, but there's a weightless delicate quality about them that's a far cry from the leaden
pall of much generic ambient of the darker persuasion that typically taps into the Drone-zone. And usualsuspsithun http://www.infractionrecords.com/trata in further archaeologies."ently static exteriors, or dive in to