A Tapestry for Sourcerers

Mesmeric Revelation

Raffaele Serra was born in Verona, Italy, in 1948. About twenty years later he moved to Milan and started his first experiments with electronic music joining the group "Moralità, Trance e Saggezza" (Morality, Trance and Wisdom), a band dealing with experimental rock. During the Seventies he worked as sound and light technician and assistant director with many avantgarde theatre companies. His continuing studies and musical research took him to Amsterdam where he met the researcher Walter Maioli at the Het Heinde Van De Wereld, a multimedia center directed by the anthropologist Fred Gales. In Amsterdam he produced many cassettes for "Sound Reporters", a label focused on multimedia projects, the diffusion of ancient cultures and the struggling for freedom of indigenous people. In the second half of the Eighties, together with psychologists and psychoanalysts, he has dedicated himself to the study and research of music therapy. He released some successfull albums like "Musiche Per il Cuore e la Memoria" (Music For the Heart and Memory) and "Ishtar". At the same time he also collaborated with the dancer/coreographer Claire Ann Matz and created many soundtracks for the danish painter/sculptor Nes Lerpa's environmental exhibitions. With an ever-growing discography and a discrete success, he felt the need for a change and pointed his research towards new sonorities. This lead him to the ambient collaboration with Alio Die on the Five Thousand Spirits project. Two highly acclaimed CD albums were released then: "A Tapestry for Sourceres" on Alio Die's Hic Sunt Leones label, and "Mesmeric Revelation" on the american label Crowd Control Activities.  At the end of the Nineties, using a lot of field-recordings and analogic instruments, Raffaele gave life to a new project: Cinema for the Ears. He self-released some very beautiful works like "Our Lady of the Sphere" and "Memories of an Unborn Baby". In the beginning of the new millenium he got to know Andrea Marutti and became the very first Afe resident musician.