Genre: Ambient / Rock

Track Listing:

01 Prima tappa: Medelana (Bologna)
02 Seconda tappa: Laterina (Arezzo)
03 Terza tappa: Ariccia (Roma)
04 Quarta tappa: Casaline (L'Aquila)
05 Quinta tappa: ancora Laterina (Arezzo)
06 Ultima tappa: Medelana (Bologna)
07 La canzone dell'estate (il Borro)

‘A rainless summer’, to unravel the Italian title for any non-speaker also serves as purlieu, with its demesne set in the landscapes of central Italy wherein Matteo Uggeri wandered on a personal holiday equipped with microphone and minidisc recorder. There he set about replicating all the sounds about him that were in reach, landscape, weather, and people. Later a second trip in the same year had both Matteo and his friend, Davide Valecchi return to one of the many locales to record melodies on guitars and to mix and smooth his experiences.

While comprised mainly of field recordings, “un’estate senza pioggia” has an undesecrate attentiveness toward the landscape, spliced and angled. Coupled with the crystalline recordings so elegantly captured on the simplicity of minidisc the album leaves an imprint of dry warmth and notably of dusty travel. Thankfully, the portions do not feel like a juxtaposed lucky dip though it is not quite an album of repeated listens due to travelling tapestry woven, but like a good documentary film, something to be experienced and viewed and appreciated.

At sixty minutes, this trip is a long road, winding constantly through new domains redolent with the conversation of cars and the clamour of crowds. Insects shudder and sigh in a grazing heat as languorous electric guitar choruses sweetly to their baking. Accordion breathes a haunting under waterfalls. Television, radio, is captured by stalking outside of houses where footsteps mark the hunter. Doors creak into explosive frequencies. Sounds are emphatically dismantled wherein even what appears a washing machine takes on peculiar chant to the chimes of a nursery rhyme.

The high production and delineating exactness to the mixing elevate this quilt of patches into something very intimate and thoughtful.

The album comes in an odd-sized card gatefold sleeve, fully coloured with scratched sepia photography and inset photographic Italian architecture and landscape upon gloss. Liner notes detail Matteo’s journey and locations for each track. In addition a bookmark is inserted in the same stylistic aesthetics. The disc continues the tasteful attention to the artwork accompanying.