Unoccupied Areas is
Elio Martusciello's first solo full-length album. It consists of five electro-acoustic works realized between 1995 and 1999. Fans of the Italian soundsmith's work in
Ossatura and Metaxu are in for a small shock: the music found herein is much more academic-like, following the approaches and methods of the Bourges, Ina-GRM, and empreintes DIGITALes circles. In fact, the difference between this material and
Martusciello's live group performances is similar to the one found between Lionel Marchetti's solo studio works and live work with Jérôme Noetinger.
Martusciello's pieces invite listeners to come back to the sound as an object of wonder. The first piece, "
[email protected]," was put together using the material found on the Staalplaat release The Answering Machine Solution, featuring messages recorded and/or conceived by various experimental artists. The result is a small-scale symphony of miscommunicating voices in a number of languages, some of them bland automated answering system voices, others much more colorful (there's a preacher in there somewhere, his frantic call adding a schizophrenic note to the piece). "Dispositivo di Superficie" is the most poetic piece, its sound fragments (taken from electronica artists and contemporary composers) reassembled in puzzling, fascinating ways. "Ibidem" and "Proiezioni" adopt a more direct approach to sound, presenting unaltered but out of context sound events like enigmas to be solved or abstract chunks to be appreciated for what they are: complex air vibrations. The closing "Hommage à Pierre Schaeffer -- Étude aux Chemins de Fer" is a variation on Schaeffer's groundbreaking 1948 piece, using sound fragments from the original. It ranks as one of the best such homages realized around the 50th anniversary of Schaeffer's "invention" of musique concrète, because it pays tribute to and contemporizes the music simply and efficiently. The material on
Unoccupied Areas is not as fresh or groundbreaking as the first
Ossatura CD, nor as accessible as Metaxu's second, but it makes a fine platter of electro-acoustic compositions. ~ François Couture