EMANUELE ERRANTE - migrations

(CD, apegenine)

I think that the main appeal of drone music is its accordance to an idealized human life, which also flows in endless circles and loops, is rich in layers and emotion and ceases in density only to be lifted anew again. Real life does have its erruptions and harsh breaks and disruptions, but in an ideal life we dream of a steady flow, of an everlasting moment of bliss and happiness (whatever that might be to us individually). Like the endless breaking of waves at a beach and the ocean after all is where all life on this planet comes from.

Drones mirror this ideal situation and turn it into a motionless yet constantly moving impression by the means of musical art. Sometimes they add to the ideal by hyperbolizing and at other times they concentrate it to its basic core by simplification but mostly they try to freeze an impression in time, which doesn’t mean that the tracks ought to be minimal – the musical language seems to command movement and transitions to be able to denominate constancy or immobility. Like Greg Headly who took over the movement of the planets to explore life's mysteries in an alike manner.

The chapitre series is a new sideway of apegenine records, which will concentrate on drones, ambient and field recordings, as an addition to their hitherto more electronica / IDM oriented schedule (which gave us some highlights with David Kristian and Surrashu) and this CD by Emanuele Errante is a great start. Somewhere between modern composition and dense ambient drones he presents eight multilayered tracks that celebrate the fine point between immobility of sounds and large movements without ever being minimal. Quite contrary, these songs are rich and lush in their arrangements, overflowing with spheres, pads and manipulated instruments, but also with harps and pianos. Errante follows the pulse of the human body, a relaxed breathing rhythm mostly, and instead of working from a beginning to an end seems to layer different aspects of the music onto each other. Thereby the music sounds static and dynamic at the same time.

On closer inspection, ie. after having dozed soundly to the soundtrack of „migrations“ (don’t worry, it is one of my rules to listen to records I am about to review for four or five times on different occassions and with different levels of concentration to form an opinion about them) I feel that the appeal of this CD also has a lot to do with the human warmth the music spreads. These sounds are warm, their pulse is even and likeable, the arrangements are lush and organic.

Music like this is open to a manifold bouquet of connotations, associations and dreams. He usually stays away from the more abstract sounds, though he confronts the sound of waves crashing on the beach with a single high note for quite some time at the beginning of „calabria“ before the strings set in. „migrations“ is a great soundtrack for endless travels in the listeners mind, as the title already implies. And what is more exciting and relaxing at the same time than travelling in your mind? That in itself is a form of art.