Washed between industrial and devotional fronts, eight pluviophile excursions by Giuseppe Ielasi & Giovanni Civitenga, steeped in the manifold evocativeness of rainfall — how it orchestrates some of our deepest memories and fantasies. 

‘Yesterday it started to rain…
‘The smell of damp tarmac rising up through open windows from a suburban pavement, a school playground, a basketball court…
‘The rain cut through a band of low pressure that had been lying over the city for days, pinging rhythmically off metal, causing rolling tyres to hiss and spit.
‘Its soundtrack is the debut full length from Rain Text, run through with build-ups of low-end pressure relieved by the fizz and clatter of metallic rhythms…
‘Static… discord… release…’

“We entered the shadowy mouth of a new space, descending into a realm that precedes the underworld, the arcane, far from our time. We met beasts that gave us lessons about their language which we started learning without grammar.”

Bocca D’ombra is built on a series of whispers and breaths, panting and rustling. A closeness sometimes verging on claustrophobia is fissured with the sounds of crackling fireworks, birdsong, church bells, muffled cries from a children’s playground, like shafts of faraway light, or an insurgent subconscious. A kind of musical animism — influenced by ecological writers like Timothy Morton and Gregory Bateson — with a heavy heart it haunts the porous limits of human and natural realms. Improvisations with traditional instruments like electric and acoustic guitars, monophonic synths, horns or flutes meet natural noise-making tools like branches, nuts, and rocks.
Heady, intoxicating, highly personal, thought-provoking music from Milan. Check it out.