|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cassette
|
|
SAUNA 073CS
|
Shared System is Tony Rolando's 2021 entry into the Make Noise Shared System series of releases that included Richard Devine, Alessandro Cortini, Robert AA Lowe, Keith Fullerton Whitman, and Surachai. Despite the limited instrumentation, this Shared System cassette is another collection of Tony Rolando's work that is familiar yet unique, catchy and is hard to stop listening to. Back in 2008, Tony Rolando was demonstrating modular synthesizers to anybody who would listen. A few folks were wildly curious -- most people asked, "How do you make music with that thing?" Tony's lonesome journey into the vacant landscape of analog electronic music was like being reborn. He wanted people to understand and experience riding these electrical currents of music for themselves. In order to do so, he needed to convince them that the seemingly primitive analog modular synthesizer was a musical instrument capable of amplifying an artist's unique voice. Around 2010, outside the Empty Bottle with the artist Surachai, he surmised that sending a singular, modular synthesizer to five artists to record two tracks live would highlight unique results-illustrating the capabilities of the modular synthesizer as an instrument and the artists' distinct voices. Here is the original text that accompanied the release of these five records from Richard Devine, Alessandro Cortini, Robert AA Lowe, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Surachai: "The Shared System series compiles the separate recordings of several artists utilizing the same electronic musical instrument, the Shared System. At times it feels as though electronic music has become an overly automated form driven by simplified genre specific apps and software. What happens when the signal path is not pre-defined or optimized for a popular result? The Shared System is a modular synthesizer developed by Make Noise. It has no pre-determined signal path, and is not designed for any particular musical destination. In limiting the artists to this one instrument, we hope the Shared System series of records will purely illustrate the intentions of the artists."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
IMPREC 502LP
|
Tony Rolando's debut Breakin' Is A Memory could be your soundtrack. This worldbuilding album of electronic music leaves room for the listener to make big personal connections through subtly complex music resembling a sonic mobile which, as it spins, reveals new forms and colors. This is a collection of very human music with a deceptive simplicity and relaxed intensity. The listener gets the feeling that only the instrument designer could play with such flexible expression, unencumbered by the electronic element. These is cleverly assembled music that you want to flip over and play again, like Rolando's recent cassette on Important Records' Cassauna label. As with all Imprec vinyl releases, great care has been taken to ensure that this is a high quality pressing with low noise floor and loads of sonic detail. On Breakin' is a Memory, Tony Rolando invites the listener on tiny adventures questing insignificant treasures. Minimal percussion only suggests rhythm, allowing your mind to wander the crystalline lattices Tony weaves from handfuls of simple arpeggios. Soft analog bass frequencies make your travels more comfortable and the Strega instrument, a recurring recognizable character, is there to lead when you are too lost. The pace of Breakin' is a Memory oscillates from restless roadway motion to meditative exploration. The record closes with a celebratory decimation of the graphic memories of these tiny adventures. Play it again to rekindle them. For more than a decade, Tony Rolando has composed electricity into musical instruments at Make Noise. When he collaborated with Alessandro Cortini in 2019 to create the Strega instrument, the experience rekindled Tony's love of composing and recording music. In 2021 he released Old Cool Echoes with on Cassauna (SAUNA 066CS). A third release of music composed entirely for the Shared System instrument he designed will follow in 2022. RIYL: Early Oneohtrix Point Never, Alessandro Cortini, Caterina Barbieri, Tangerine Dream.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
Cassette
|
|
SAUNA 066CS
|
Tony Rolando's debut release Old Cool Echoes is the kind of tape you flip over and play again and again. His second release, an LP for Important titled Breakin' Is A Memory, will be available in early 2022. A CD titled Shared System will follow. Imagine if you wished away your surroundings and found yourself in a synthetic landscape where the simplest three-color pattern animated an entire horizon. If you could suppress your memory enough to experience the new beauty of it, but not so much that you lost the pieces of yourself that make life worth living, this could be your soundtrack. For more than a decade, Tony Rolando has composed electricity into musical instruments at Make Noise. When he collaborated with Alessandro Cortini in 2019 to create the Strega instrument, the experience rekindled Tony's love of composing and recording music. On Old Cool Echoes, Tony follows mutating patterns and slow timbral gradients, allowing them to suggest composition as much as he does, occasionally exploring digital media catacombs and dabbling in the microtonal, all with minimal percussion interruption.
|