Expand / To Feel Embraced
This time I’ve been expanding way beyond Italy – hence the title – and way beyond minimalist music. The mix opens with an excerpt from a live set by Mace, one of Italy’s most interesting urban producers. A hip-hop beat…
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The Happy Arsenal of the Broken: Toni Esposito & the Napoli Power
German Marxists in Naples In the mid-1920s Naples became a refuge for a group of Marxist theorists loosely associated with what later came to be known as the Frankfurt School. The city had long been a popular destination among literary…
Avant-garde on the Balera: Franco Battiato’s Classical Contemporary
Franco Battiato is a balera singer turned avant-garde composer, and that’s precisely where the strength of his music lies. The Italian term balera doesn’t have a perfect equivalent in English: think of an unpretentious, all-ages working-class dance-hall, where people would…
Stefano Pio on Giusto Pio’s Motore Immobile
Giusto Pio’s Motore Immobile began to gain wider recognition when Alan Licht included it in the third instalment of his Minimalist Lists in 2007. Originally released in 1979 and reissued by Soave only in 2017, the album has since earned…
Lea Bertucci through the eyes of Barnett Newman
On a trip to Ohio in August 1949, Barnett Newman had the chance to visit the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in the southwest of the state. Located along the Ohio River, these monumental earthen mounds served as ceremonial sites for the…
Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia was the name given to the southern Italian territories colonised by the Greeks around the 8th century BC. Having found myself listening to a lot of Greek experimental music, from my favourite Cypriot minimalist Evagoras Karageorgis to Tasos…
Exploring Resonance: Minimalist Piano Works by Messina, Battiato and Pio
In a wake-up call to his fellow downtown musicians published in EAR Magazine in 1978, No Wave composer Rhys Chatham weighed in on the state of what he dubbed post ‘60s traditionalist music: In the past 10 years or so…
Minimalismo Mediterraneo
Tracklist Giusto Pio – ‘Motore Immobile’ (Motore Immobile, Cramps 1979) Alvin Curran – excerpt from Side A (Canti e Vedute del Giardino Magnetico, Ananda 1975) Lino Capra Vaccina – ‘Canti delle Sfere’ (Antico Adagio, Nō 1978) Luciano Cilio – ‘Primo…
Claudio Rocchi – Suoni di Frontiera
I first discovered Claudio Rocchi through my father’s vinyl collection, which featured his Il Volo Magico N. 1 LP as one of his most prized possession. As a small-town hippy and prog enthusiast teenager in the early 70s, my father…
Evagoras Karageorgis – Kenthmata
The term Mediterranean Minimalism describes Kenthmata quite literally, as this record by Cypriot composer Evagoras Karageorgis applies the minimalist tropes of loops and repetition to traditional Greek melodies and rhythms. This simple but very effective formula is inscribed in the…