Bleep

Electronic maestro Alessandro Cortini further explores crushing industrial landscapes with expertly crafted sound design executed with awe inspiring decayed grandeur. Cortini starts ‘ECCO’ at the ground floor of human creativity with an elemental drone, seemingly synthesised from the deepest crevasse of consciousness. The scene is set for the LP’s almost-title track ‘CHIAROSCURO’, as intricate complexes of synth arps whirr and swoop like tiny moving organisms above an intensifying auditory earthquake, recalling post-rock’s most dynamic codas. Polarities push and pull at each other to the very end of SCURO CHIARO, concluding with ‘FIAMMA’, a melodious noise-waltz steadily engulfed in consuming fires of static.

‘Chiaroscuro’ is used by art historians when referencing a mode of contrasting figures in a scene using light and shadow. Stanley Kubrick was a fan, as well as Rembrandt and Caravaggio. The phrase neatly summarises the work of prolific composer and Nine Inch Nails member Alessandro Cortini, a creator with an extensive list of credits beyond his vital hand in Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pivot to dark ambient film scores. SCURO CHIARO is a pure distillation of Cortini’s amalgamated sensibilities; an album that is as hypnotically weighty as it is miraculously graceful. Using the bespoke Strega instrument he has been developing with Make Noise, “Strega is a successful attempt to condense my sonic aesthetic into a music making box. Throughout the time that I finished the record I was receiving prototypes, and their work was integrated on the record".

SCURO CHIARO is a deeply cinematic drama, a striking work that effortlessly draws together disparities into a complete and immersive picture from an inimitable talent in electronic composition.