New forthcoming releases:
Robert Davies - Woodland Alcoves
Aglaia Hymns
Cdr Ltd art-edition 99 copies - Program of upcoming releases..
New Release! AGLAIA Nights in Nubiland Cd
Alio Die & Lorenzo Montanà
Holographic Codex - Cd out on Projekt January 2015!
Tracking list:
1 Muns de Etrah
2 Hydra e Vers
3 Akvil
4 Silent Rumon
5 Egetora
6 Cinta della Breccia Divina
7 Eternal Wisdom
Between march and september 2013
Mixed and Mastered at Lunae Studio, Tuscany, july 2014
Lorenzo Montanà: Piano, Electronics, Echo Strings and Efx.
Alio Die: Drones and Loops, Zither, Treatments, Field Recordings.
Cover photo by Hic Sunt Leones
Graphic design by Sam Rosenthal
Alio Die & Lorenzo Montanà 'Holographic Codex' - Cd dig.
Crossing styles and boundaries, Holographic Codex is a mixture of atmospheric ambience, IDM sequences and psybient textures; a blending of ritualistic soundscapes and technogenic landscapes.
Each of these cult Italian musicians have over 40 releases to their name; Alio Die often appears on America's Projekt records, and Montanà on Pete Namlook's German FAX label. On their first collaboration, they create transporting and alluring aural sceneries of evolving, intimate sounds. Featuring intriguing beats seldom heard on Alio Die albums, and a greater use of textural, granular synths than past releases from Montanà, Holographic Codex is awash in mystical drones and cosmic impulses, surrounded by subtle hints towards the atmosphere of the Renaissance.
Standout tracks include the early 70s Tangerine Dream flavoring of "Silent Rumon" and the psybient escapism of the opener, "Muns de Etrah"
Distant echoes of ancient monastery, choral voices of lost languages, and musical structures of shifting melodic and textural passages reveal that Holographic Codex is a secret code: a precise and skillfully crafted sonic mantra of hypnotic sonic depth and symbolic fragments that are revealed during the listening experience.
Alio Die has over 60 releases, some on America's Projekt Records and others on his own Hic Sunt Leones;
Montanà recorded 5 collaboration with Pete Namlook on Pete's German FAX label, plus released 10 solo albums with various European imprints (his work also includes T.T.L, an ongoing collaboration with Trisol artist Tying Tiffany. T.T.L. create instrumental music for soundtracks and trailers. Their song "Deep Shadow" was featured in The Hunger Games movie trailer.)
Alio Die and Lorenzo Montaná have quite effectively blended their talents to produce seven tracks of eerie, dream-infused music that can easily travel the synapses of the mind, firing imagination along the way to deliver an experience.
Alio Die, an Italian ambient composer has more than a few excellent ambient albums in release including the stunning Echo Passage, released in 1999. That album was released with Vidna Obmana, the ambient name of Dirk Serries. With a new ambient set by Alio Die, called Holographic Codex (announced in December), the classic composer finds his work being shared with Lorenzo Montaná. Montaná is no stranger to the qualified and explored ethereal tones. His music is created with as broad a palette of sound as many of the classic ambient artists that we know today. both current and historically.
With Holographic Codex, Alio Die and Lorenzo Montaná have quite effectively blended their talents to produce seven tracks of eerie, dream-infused music that can easily travel the synapses of the mind, firing imagination along the way to deliver an experience.
Holographic Codex begins with the entry gate of “Muns de Etrah” to get you on the road. By the time you hit the second track, you have been whisked into the frightening disruptions of a horrifying reality complete with mutterings. Eventually, after running through several long pieces, you find yourself in a perturbation of space and time, completely agitated and stirred by the mechanized echos of “Silent Rumon”, a fifteen-minute walkway of fevered thought and visualizations.
The other fifteen-minute plus composition, “Cinta della Breccia Divina” delivers you into the hands of the album’s closer, “Eternal Wisdom”, a spacey work that feels like a float into the loneliness of the galaxy.
Ambient music is a genre that speaks to many by way of its story craft created by the use of sound, and fed directly into the brain, accessing the regions that have its own stored interpretations. This makes ambient a unique experience. Holographic Codex has its collection of stories waiting for you.
ALIO DIE & LORENZO MONTANÀ: Holographic Codex (2015)
A distant sonic line amplifies its presence as the first seconds of "Muns de Etrah" are courting its first minute. The line is musical. It spreads a veil, as a shadow, which waves under the weight of its density. That becomes a meshing of breaths which hem in a shape of loop, escaping at the passage a slight filet of spectral breezes. The white noises arrive at the same time as the percussions. Their sober strikes shape a splendid down-tempo which sways hips in a sound universe which increases its wealth as the seconds flee "Muns de Etrah". While the percussions drum an abstract rhythm, escaping some scattered bangings here and there, fragile chords are ringing and weaken the spectral melody which embalms the universe of "Muns de Etrah" of which the supernatural veil is delicately shaken by percussions a little more lively . It's by a seducing down-tempo, wrapped in a psybient envelope, that Alio Die and Lorenzo Montanà attract us in the universe of “Holographic Codex”. For this first collaboration, the very eclectic duet mixes with delight their musical and spiritual visions, giving an album which crosses all the spheres of an EM which despise all borders. Whether it's psychedelic trance with long moments of sedative ambiences, while passing by the delicate rhythms of Pacific School, “Holographic Codex” proposes a music where the winds, the long guttural drones of Alio Die embrace Lorenzo Montanà's ambient and instinctive rhythms.
The first chords of "Hydra e Vers" are falling with a veil of hybrid feelings. The melancholy gets mixed with the esotericism with a strange prayer told on a dead structure that a discreet piano maintains on a breathing apparatus. It's very spectral, at the limit ethereal! We stay in ambient spheres with "Akvil" and its swarm of prisms, carillons which rings in long spectral groans. The music evolves towards a more oniric phase a little after the 2nd minute with synth waves which wrap up the singings of ectoplasms and deafen the noises of the carillons. It's a very meditative track where the darkness and the brightness come to titillate the subliminal. "Egetora" is clearly more ambient, darker. But between both, there is "Silent Rumon" and its strange spectral voices which blow and complain within an outcry of sibylline breezes. Even if very ambient, the introduction of "Silent Rumon" remains very captivating, very intrusive. Fine drummings bring the music to another level as soon as the bar of the 4th minute is crossed. The rhythm which comes then is delicate. Sculptured in the model Roach and of the Pacific School, it moves as rustles of feet, as a spiritual ballet on a carpet of lichen. It's more the elements which surround it which move it, which transport it. Riffs are thundering like the angers of the gods on rustles, singings and sometimes even shouts of anxiety, while a panoply of esoteric elements establishes a surrounding climate of spiritual trance. It's very intense and the effects which surround the music transports us literally somewhere else. I liked this a lot! My living room is illuminated of a strange aura when I put this track on. After the very black and ambient "Egetora","Cinta della Breccia Divina" assails our ears with noises of a boreal fauna, ringings and drones in an introduction rich in sound colors. It's very meditative, at the limit Buddhist with these ringings which sparkle in astral winds and vocal drones. The sonic fauna is rich and very versatile with tints and nuances which make that we don't really find that time passes slowly in this long route where the elements are the strength of a structure which moves, which evolves like a storm perturbs the course of clouds. Phenomenon that we also observe on the very ambient "Eternal Wisdom" and of which the breezes drop filet of voices which remind me Steve Roach's indiscretions on the structures of silence. It's a very beautiful ambient track. Introspective and meditative as we like!
I really liked this first collaboration between Alio Die and Lorenzo Montanà. I like these ambient and intuitive rhythms which are snaking roguishly this sibylline universe weaved in these enchanting sonic drones and these astral winds sparkling with one thousand prisms. The strength of this album rests on this skillful mixture of its tracks. “Holographic Codex” opens with strength and ends in the peace of mind, while making us live a range of rich feelings between the 50 minutes which separate both extremes; the cornerstone, the highlight being "Silent Rumon". But all around it revolve its shadows and its influences which have this gift to drag us constantly towards levels where the contemplativity takes holographic forms.
Sylvain Lupari / Synth & Sequences (March 10th, 2015)
