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Elio Martusciello
concrete songs

Album IT 2011 on Ticonzero label
Electronic and Pop (Experimental)

These songs, including the lyrics, represent the attempt, invitation, call and urgency of “thinking in a different light”, as Maria Zambrano suggested and which enabled Jacques Derrida to define the entire history of thought as a “photology”. So it’s like thinking and composing at first light with the need to experiment with new forms and different contents of memory; which for me means getting popular music to dialogue with radical improvisational practices together with new electro-electronic technologies in experimental compositional techniques. The songs on this CD have been realised using methods of composition inspired by ‘Musique Concrète’. This compositional practice does not depend on any “abstract” principle for creating pieces (like the customary two part process of a musical idea being transcribed onto sheet music and it then being performed by a musician from a score) but relies more on a “concrete” approach to these sonic materials which would not otherwise exist outside of sound recording and reproduction techniques. There is no hierarchical structure in these songs so that all the “materials” used (including voice and text) are put together and treated the same (in contrast to what happens to other song-like forms in remix/digital culture). My interest also focussed on experimental improvisational practices and nearly all the musicians involved in this CD come from this musical environment; many of them have been directly working in this field including the two singers, Mike Cooper and Sabina Meyer. In effect then practically no-one had to learn any music or see anything previously written down (excepting occasional chords). Some of these musicians played in contexts not directly connected to the creation of these songs (i.e.: concerts, rehearsals, workshops and improvisation sessions, etc. yet always ‘experimental’) and include Music Conservatory students who have taken part in some of my workshops at various times and places. This compositional approach has inspired and enabled me to extrapolate formal solutions directly from what musicians came up with when left to express themselves freely and to ‘play’ with sound. These then are songs that establish connections between people, sound objects and “forms” (containers of memory and consequently their ‘time’) distant from each other in both time and space. Unlikely relationships... between musicians whom we might never have seen together on the same project, let alone a project like this. In conclusion, for me this consists of an extraordinary shift in complex levels – from constructing an actual musical form to the technological construction of musical matter. This is no longer inert, indifferent matter or the extension of the architecture of music or notes, but pure matter, loaded with signs and memory; such matter that connects directly with the life I, and others, have experienced.

Musicians

	Elio Martusciello eg, g, sampler, *1959 IT album by
	Sabina Meyer voc, *1969 CH voice
	Mike Cooper voc, g, *1942 GB voice

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