Barbara De Dominicis besides using her voice, loves collecting sounds, manipulating them and inventing sound textures. In 2009 she published as a soloist Anti-Gone, a concept album which bases its narrative on Greek mythology. In 2008 she began a collaboration with canadian cellist Julia Kent; their performance (initially under the name of Intermittenze) will soon become a stable project in progress with the name Parallel41 (a musical/ visual/ improvisatory project released internationally on french record label BASKARU in July 2012). Her sound works include Whimsical Cartography – selected among the works which will be exhibited in the collective multimedia show E-ArtQuake in commemoration of the earthquake in Irpinia and Re_di_Sound, a tribute to Marcel Duchamp. Her growing interest in soundscapes leads her to conceive of A tale of two cities: a series of audio collages designed to portray the similarities and differences of two cities which lie on the same parallel, Naples and New York. This work has become a radiowork produced for RadioPapesse vs Radia network, entitled Crossings. Among her current projects Exqusite What [as both curator and creator] a collective inspired by the Surrealist practice  of exquisite corpses dedicated to the creation of an audio-visual web platform; La Reverie/La Sogneria [curator/creator]_a multimedia space linked to dreaming. Besides she curates a series of radio podcasts entitled “The Cat Cinderella” with the aim of promoting the dissemination of works by women artists on the brink between net_art, sound art and audio documentary.

In 2012 she became a member of AIPS (Italian soundscapes archive) and at the end of the same year she started to collaborate with french visual artist Aude Francois: they conceived Self Made Worlds a performance for voice, electronics, and visual explorations (liberally adapted from ”House of Incest” by Anaïs Nin): a dialogue between the organic body depicted in video and the sounds and voices present on the stage. Her new solo album Body Maps was out on december 16th 2022 on Folderol Records and has been inspired by Jean Luc Nancy’s Corpus. A blend of spoken word, electroacoustic textures and instruments, found sounds and voice; these tracks evolved from a series of improvised recording sessions held in Italy between 2018 and 2021.

Body Maps had a quite long incubation, almost two years and a half of tryouts, interruptions and afterthoughts to find a possible way to decipher this ineffable and particularly crucial moment of Barbara’s life. The lyrics represent the attempt to transfigure the fragility into which her body was definitely sinking: a private emotional labyrinth made of abandonment, imperfection, vulnerability, time, alienation, sensuality, illness, identity. A sad and carnal quasi geography of the body, strongly related to a denied, (un)revealed, recovered sensuality. Barbara wanted the music to preserve a sense of vulnerability and spontaneity therefore during the post production process she kept plenty of unvarnished sounds (teeth, fingers, mouth), half broken melodies, cracked words, ghostly echoes.

Her Mixtape: “I was kindly asked by Francesco to choose a few tracks I love, that’s why this is not a podcast, neither a chart… there’s nothing consequential, I am just following the flow and “listing” what touches me.”

Dominique Lawalree – Post-Scriptum

I’d like to start this sort of travelog among sonic drifts that expanded my vision both in terms of imagination and sound with Dominic Lawaree, who sadly passed away few years ago. His poetic work First Meeting creates dreamish and  mesmerizing texture through a delicate weaving between synths and the intimacy of his voice.

Giulio Aldinucci – Smoke Over The River

Smoke over the river {Karlrecords} is part of the album “Real”  by the italian composer and sound artist Giulio Aldinucci, whose work I truly admire. It balances my inner concept of solitude within a tension for hope and openness. Real “is a reflection on the endless possibility of sonic transformation, the ability we have to create new realities transmuting the soundscape around us and the inner soundscape inside us, even only by imagining it”  the artist says.

Ossatura – No Blind Spots Left

From the album Maps and Mazes. Elio Martusciello (guitar, computer), Fabrizio Spera (drums, amplified objects, strings, tapes, radio, electronics), Luca Venitucci (piano, synthesizer, drum machine, objects). Their music takes me to a somewhere that I call  ”in-between”  creating  something like a primordial substance that states to me like “necessary”…

 Low – Embrace

…Guess we all were speechless Beloved …Mimi Parker ! Let her voice be…

Luminance Ratio – Love In Henn Na Hotel

The next tune is “Love In Henn Na Hotel”  from the album Uncanny Valley by Luminance Ratio. I find unique the sound of this trio (they were once four with Andrea Ics Ferraris- composed by Gianmaria Aprile, Luca Mauri and Luca Sigurtà suspended between noise and harmony in perpetual exploration of fragmented identities.

Rosa Yemen – Herpes Simplex

Lizzy Mercier Descloux formed the performance art duo Rosa Yemen, and recorded a mini-album at the end of the seventies. I often listen to her, looking for a sort of energetic and unvarnished sonic immersion. A truly eclectic and wild figure with an authentic punk attitude able to produce impulsively-created acts.

Acre – Implantable Memories

Acre is an improvisation-based trio, working on forms, images and places of music and listening. The trio (Ermanno Baron- drums, objects Ginomaria Boschi – guitar, effects Marco “uBiK” Bonini – laptop, tapes) last album “a Different Contellation”  is the encounter between the language developed by the trio  and the the wonderful voice of Ludovica Manzo.

The Ladder Cloud Thing – Velvet Variations

Velvet Variation by The Ladder Cloud Thing. First time I stepped into their sounds I felt their music occupies a liminal territory between earth and sky; while still abstract, the track slowly evolves into a gently obsessive melody where you can easily get lost.

Interiors – Ghost Town

Interiors ( Valerio Corzani – voice, electric bass, tub bass, percussions, laptop and Erica Scherl violin, live electronics ) lie somewhere between electronic and acoustic approach blending dub gashes, improvisations and glitch collages . This shady and cinematic tune is a portray of a ghost city.

The Beatles – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

And of course a Beatles classic …Bright, luminous, sunny! It accompanied the birth of my daughter. By the way her name is not Lucy!

Federico Madeddu Giuntoli – Text and the Form (feat. Moskitoo)

The Text and the Form is the first solo album by Federico Madeddu Giuntoli published by the japanese label Flau. In the artist’s words, “the album shaped itself according to a loose process of refinement and layering. A long, undisturbed assembling across a decade, often against my own will to reach a definitive form”.
I find its vulnerability and rarefaction just so beautiful and moving.

Teho Teardo – Wake Up The Bear

This album by Teho Teardo whose works I am fond of, has been inspired by the incredible photographs of Charles Fréger: Wilder Mann. Even though his music is quite dense and multi-layered, I’ve always had the feeling that the sonic environment the listener is immersed in, is just so intimate and brittle…I love traveling inside the spires of this work.

 

Roberto Fega – Nameless, Without Identity

Roberto Fega holds  a dense and dark vision of  sound whose complexity discloses several minuscule elements, sometimes joyful most of the time obscure . I like this sense of precariety…can not be too sure where your mood will lead following the sound.

Cristian Maddalena – Achantus

Cristian Maddalena is an artist I discovered only recently through a radio drama he curated for RAI Radio 3. He is a sort of Renaissance man who takes care of every single aspect of his music, creating sound textures that are suspended between fairy stories and grotesque dreams. Here he reworked a track by Iran, a trio composed by Nazim Comunale, Andrea Silvestri e Rodolfo Villani.

George Delerue – Contempt (Theme de Camille)

This is something I come back to…Over and over…again… I can’t help  being a big fun of Godard cinematography … Get lost in Delerue’s Theme of Camille.

Attilio Novellino – Str​ä​ngar III

Attilio Novellino is an italian sound artist who uses electronics, field recordings, piano and guitar to draw hypnotic textures and captivating layers at the border with noise. Str​ä​ngar III is my favorite.

Emanuele Errante – Circulus

Emanuele Errante has been praised for his ability to create emotive and evocative soundscapes with a minimalistic approach. Circulus is taken from his last work Shapes, recorded during a live performance in Salerno. Let the journey across his sonic spires begin….

Kae Tempest – Hold Your Own

Kae Tempest is a poet I adore. Her genuine and uncompromising approach is moving…Her words unfold like a river made of magmatic elements and stuck in our head and under the skin.

Francesco Ziello – Voce

Duramadre is the work by composer Francesco Ziello out on Folderol …A cinematic and hypnotic work thought for dance, suspended between light and obscurity.

Danilo Ligato – La tigre assenza

This tune is part of the album Fernweh by italian composer Danilo Ligato. La Tigre Absenza, an intense ode that pays an homage to the brittle poetry of Cristina Campo. The poetry-essence and delicacy hovers over the tune thanks to the presence of empty spaces among the beautifully crafted sonic textures

Angelo Maria Farro – The Order Of Ideology

Angelo Maria Farro, is a composer ranging from audio/video installations to music for film and TV. The Night of the Electric Insects  published by Three;four records is a wonderful and undefinable work conceived like a fragmented drift, essential and yet cinematic.

Luca Giuoco – SHANTIH 3 TIMES

The Sound artist Luca Giuoco, created a coral project reworking short sounds of a few artists he invited to collaborate . The multiple and radical experiments led him to assemble nine tracks that make up his intense and multifaceted work. Collettivo Inconscio 1 _ (Dissipatio/Toten Schwan, 2022).

Galati – Underneath The Noisy Glacier

Roberto Galati is Italian sound artist who draws guitar driven ambient textures, this time creating a fascinating soundscape in nine parts of pure organic beauty, just like nature itself. My pick is Underneath the Noisy Glacier from the album Alps.

Body Maps is out now on Folderol Records. Look HERE for more information on Barbara De Dominicis.