Winterreise , or winter trip, for want of a better concept to hang a composition on Fabio Orsi invokes the journey. Indeed midsection in this six part ambient epic are the field recordings of people seaside, as if arrival and holiday frolics before return. Take it as you will but the journey metaphor strikes me as overplayed. The tools for this album are guitar, effects and old keyboards but you can add in field recording editing and multilayered compositional technique. Bookending the album are two epic tracks that can be considered the ‘home’ event descriptions with the other tracks concerned with the transitions between these places. They are massive drone like affairs with synth tonal washes and guitar micro events, all highly treated and processed until reaching certain grandeur beyond their elemental state.
Given that it falls in the general rubric of ambient it fulfills the onus of the mantle and is generally a subtle change of mood between start and close. Part two sheds some of the dense epic mood and brings a brighter and sparse air to the chord variations. Part Three, more relaxed with guitar and effects more foregrounded along with the interplay of the field recordings and piano motifs. Part four veers towards a denser, static ambient, muffled scape of chords and echoed distortions. Part five, a more vibrant insistent driving track with extended clear synth and guitar layers with effects building a sonorous mass as a prelude to the epic ‘home’ of Part six.
It is a momentous form of ambient, if this is to be equated with a form of organic whole revealing the whole over time. It could also be considered within a sense of narrative, or of landscape, perhaps even descriptive sound construction. Regardless of how it is considered it remains a work of a gifted contemporary sound artist delivering a take on a field of sensibility that has been well covered and will no doubt be traversed as long as the inclination towards epic grandeur remains.
Innerversitysound
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