An aural bridge between two distinct generations of Italian experimental and electroacoustic musicians, "Liminale" is the debut collaborative outing from the creative partnership of Luigi Turra and Elio Martusciello.
A single, nearly 40 minute work, extending across the two sides of the LP, "Liminale"—as its title eludes—is an exploration of the liminal through sonic means: "places that exist on the threshold, transitional spaces suspended between a before and an after, between the real and the evanescent" conceiving the soundscape as "a liminal place, a space to be inhabited without the certainty of where it leads." Unfurling like a labyrinth navigated in darkness, the piece's first half is marked by sparseness and restraint, as slow-paced guitar tones and harmonics thread silences and resonant ambience within a sprawling sense of space, delicately populated by tiny sounds, fleeting punctuations drawn from undeterminable sources, vocal utterances, and the unexpected appearance of intoxicating piano tones.
As "Liminale" progresses into its second half, Turra and Martusciello enter a more densely populated notion of the in between. No less defined by the presence of space and mystery, discreet textures rustle and writhe within passages of pure concrete abstraction and a fragmented, stretched sense of musicality: long-tones, metallic pulses, minimal vibrations, processed vocalizations, guitar harmonics, and deconstructed piano melodies, buried in spectral, gauzy hazes drifting from beyond arm's reach within an imagistic and immersive landscape of profoundly meditative scope, where each sonic element flirts the line between emergence and disappearance.
Intimate, fragile, and achingly beautiful, "Liminale", Luigi Turra and Elio Martusciello's debut collaboration, is a masterstroke in sound-craft and composition, revealing the potency of meaning locked within transitional spaces and the undefined, and imbuing silence with monumental gravity and weight. Mastered for vinyl by
Giuseppe Ielasi, and taking electroacoustic minimalism to an etherial extreme, "Liminale" is issued as the ninth entry in Die Schachtel's Decay Music series, highlighting inspired contemporary experimental efforts of the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract.
Limited edition of 200 copies.
Luigi Turra (born 1975) is a reductionist/electroacoustic composer. His main interest is in the aural balance between silence, tactile perception of sound and reseach about the aleatoric music. Trough the manipulation of human voices, digital, concrete and acoustic sources, he develops acoustic paths in which listeners experience continuous pauses and abrasive sound tensions, touching the areas of experimental sound poetry. Starting from the capture of small sounds and noises, Luigi Turra creates pieces of music, that are references to beauty of the imperfection. Its poetic aim is to reduce the signs to a minimum to reduce them to their archetypes. His work is published from labels such as mAtter, Non Visual Objects, and/OAR, LINE, Dragon's Eye Recordings, Trente Oiseaux and 901 Editions.
Elio Martusciello (born 1959 in Naples) is an italian electroacoustic and experimental music composer, musician and visual artist. His compositional aesthetics are derived from acousmatic issues, but in addition to acousmatic composition he composes for instruments and live electronics, sound installation, multi-media works, audiovisual art and computer music improvisation. Widely celebrated for both his solo efforts and his collaborations with
Eugene Chadbourne,
Mike Cooper,
Alvin Curran, Chris Cutler, Rhodri Davies, Iancu Dumitrescu, Michel Godard, Tim Hodgkinson, Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris,
Jérôme Noetinger, Tony Oxley,
Evan Parker,
Z'EV, and others, Martusciello is a founding member of: IATO (musicians collective), IXEM (Italian eXperimental Electronic Music), BOWINDO (experimental italian label), OAS (electronic musicians and composer collective), OEOAS (Orchestra Elettroacustica Officina Arti Soniche).
