Agoraphonia now invites us to listen to the whole blend just like my husband, Francesco Giannico and Guilio Aldinucci do: without distinction. The last-mentioned Italian electroacoustic musicians collected field recordings from squares (agora) all over the world, reworked them and mixed them with drones, ambient and/or noise. Why? Because they like drones, of course, but also to capture the atmosphere of these public places; to create a sonical documentary so to speak.
And they managed.
Four places from four field recorders got their own songs: squares in Marrakesh (Morocco), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Suzhou (China) and Calcata Vecchia (Italy). Although you can hear the difference between the countries, most of the samples prove to be universal human-produced sounds if you just listen to the vocals as vocals, not as language. And addictive drones which tend to build up and evolve into controlled noise by the end of each of these songs. I'm reminded of N, Kammarheit, Nadja, Morgenstern (without the beats), ... Needless to say I appreciate this very much.
The last and longest song, 'Agoraphonia', has field recordings from all over the world by 20 different people. At this point, I'm totally into this universal town square feeling that the artists had been aiming at. There are so many samples that the composers probably had to limit the volume of the underlying sounds in this one, but there remains enough ambient music to make a consistent whole of this one too.
A very intriguing listening experience.
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