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PREORDER
Ships When IN STOCK.
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ARTIST
TITLE
Harmonic Crystals
FORMAT
12 CASSETTE BOX
LABEL
CATALOG #
BLUME 021CS
BLUME 021CS
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
5/12/2023
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Blume Editions announce the release of Harmonic Crystals, one of the most ambitious bodies of recordings ever produced by the legendary Italian composer and multi-instrumentalist Roberto Laneri. Sprawling across 12 full-length cassettes, housed in a wooden box and accompanied by extensive explanatory liner notes by Laneri and numerous graphic scores by sound artist Agnese Banti -- who was also essential to the evolution of the project, also by recording, mixing and editing -- these remarkable extended vocal compositions represent a highpoint in a career that spans more than half a century. Drawing on the same foundations of cross-cultural and multi-temporal practice that defined his early efforts within the seminal avant-garde vocal collective, Prima Materia, across approximately 12 hours of material Harmonic Crystals presents minimal drone as a rigorous, evolutionary experimental process, imbued with a profound presence of humanity, drawing the ear toward the fundamental impulse to commune through sound. The inescapable power and scope of Harmonic Crystals presents a long overdue opportunity to reacknowledge a composer of singular vision working in our midst. Harmonic Crystals was composed by Roberto Laneri in collaboration with Agnese Banti, a sound artist, musician and overtone singer whose artistic activity has always been gravitating around choral music, soundscape studies, traditional music repertoires, composition for space and the collaborative dimension of music making. Recorded in Rome during the summer of 2019, presents four typologies of harmonic crystals -- a philosophical and structural approach deployed by the composer -- within which two-sound intervals converging on a common overtone (A2); three- to five-sound formations converging on a common overtone (A3, A4, A5). Harmonic crystals, as the composer explains them, are "points to an isomorphism between visual and harmonic crystals, in the sense that harmonic crystals behave in the world of acoustics the way crystals behave in the world of vision: whereas crystals can be rotated in order to transmit light in different ways, thus producing different effects and becoming suitable objects for meditation, the same result can be achieved by the manipulation of acoustic parameters such as frequency (e.g., beats), dynamics, ambiance, phasing, panning etc." seeking a kind of harmonic convergence where overtones of two or more voices converge on the unison or significant specific pitch formations, which creates trance inducing, otherworldly effects. Whether approached as a series of discrete works distributed over 24 sides of the box set's cassettes, or a single, sprawling continuum, Harmonic Crystals is a sonorous immersion with almost no precedent anywhere within the history of recorded music.
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