scissortail.bandcamp.com/album/untitled-winter
Matteo Uggeri: composition, field recordings, trumpet; Franz Krostopovic: viola; Andrea Ics Ferraris: piano, guitars: Andrea Serrapiglio: cello; Mattia Costa: drums; Gaia: whispers; Raniero Casini: paint mixer; Agostino Brambilla: organ recordings in “Zadar”.
Its title notwithstanding, this work by Matteo Uggeri has more to do with a reconnection to the benign spirits populating the most serene REM phases and what can be classified as “sweet dreaming”. It is molded by ten tracks flowing one into another without breaks, thus improving already manifest tranquilizing features. I won’t even start to recount the moral fatigue and the out-and-out tedium oppressing my afternoons when subjected to flaunty albums from the same ambit. On the contrary, this is quite remarkable in its modest poise.
Several reasons were identified to vindicate my unmediated liking of Untitled Winter. Instrumentally speaking, one has to love the way single voices unfold – with no hurry – in conjunction with loops of uncertain provenance. The melodies and the geometries they depict are rather basic, yet deep enough to sustain involvement while causing a modicum of emotional consequence. A factor of aural contentment is the use of field recordings with a distinct compositional awareness, as opposed to the usual “filling material” formulation. Echoes of realness appear with a purpose, then fade away leaving us asking “why”; before the “because” has come, the scene has probably shifted elsewhere. And so, hesitation lingers on in spite of the continuance of an inward-looking calmness.
Neither minimalism – at least in the strictest acceptation – nor pure improvisation (although I’m sure there is some), a plausible explanation might be connected to the act of surrendering to the stream of unclear images and ineffable soundtracks lulling us to grogginess in the rare moments of kept-under-check tensions. By any means do not treat it as wallpaper, and listen. - Massimo Ricci
Like fish, Matteo Uggeri’s “Untitled Winter” LP is brain food. And like a fish, it travels through an ocean of ultramundane frequencies. The instruments and their players – Uggeri plays trumpet, while an illustrious list is to be found on the Scissor Tail Editions Bandcamp – swim amongst the type of meditative, floaty state that none of us ever really feel, and it makes for a fascinating listen.
A key component of Uggeri’s ensemble’s success is that they utilise space as an onion, unwrapping layers of flummoxed pacing and graceful re-shaping of the source material. A track may stop on a chord and repeat a while, or it may drastically careen away from its original intent in a blink of a second. This never-knowing, never pre-ordained sequencing is very refreshing and intriguing, as if you’ve not heard anything quite like it. The roots are in rotting improv music – sparse lines cohering into a bigger whole; a steak left to fester its bacteria in the midday sun, like no-one else wanted it in its past life. Much of the importance held by the listener on Uggeri’s non-compositonal, instrument playing contribution becomes righted in eigth track, “Untitled III”, where he hums out spellbinding trumpet moxie that unravels over sounds of footsteps and the nearby wind.
The percussion piece that follows, “Solfeggio No 33″ sees synthesiser being added to the brew of previous viola, cello, guitar and piano (work 2 is a seeming tribute to “Spiegel Im Spiegel” by contemporary classical composer Arvo Part, being aptly titled “Spiegel Ics Spiegel”). It’s one of the most immediately digestible tracks on the release, harmonising with ambient’s will ‘o the wisp, genteel droning and extra-generific potion summoning. It would also appear, like aquamarine mammals, that Matteo favours metamorphosis over set ways, a sorcerer with a bent to extemporise the present. “Tender Is The Night”, the closing cut is barely there, a field recording of setting down something or another; pen on a table; footsteps on study floor. It marks the mood of the record in an inscripted ink, but unlike a fish of jelly, the movements of this album are never a stinging sensation. Winter is welcoming for once. - Mick Buckingham
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