Corrado Maria De Santis

*100 copies limited edition* The album 'City of Tethers' is inspired by a passage from Italo Calvino’s 'Invisible Cities', particularly the description of the city of Ottavia. This city is suspended over an abyss, held up by a net that its inhabitants know will eventually give way. “Suspended over the void, the lives of Ottavia’s inhabitants are less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will not last,” Calvino writes. The image of Ottavia has become a powerful symbol of fragility and interconnection. The suspended city evokes the delicate balance between human relationships, societal structures, and environmental instability, offering a striking metaphor for the precariousness of modern life. 

In 'City of Tethers', these ideas are mirrored in expansive, layered soundscapes that explore the fragility of the systems we rely on. The album captures a sense of precariousness and interconnectedness, evoking images of complex, unstable balance—much like Ottavia, a city suspended between two mountains, dependent on a fragile aerial web. This theme resonates with the contemporary concept of integral ecology, where the metaphor of Ottavia is frequently used to represent the intricate relationship between economic, social, and environmental crises. 'City of Tethers' offers a sonic journey that invites reflection on these themes through tracks that, like Ottavia, hover between tension and contemplation.

Corrado Maria De Santis (Midira Records, Lost Tribe Sound) an Italian guitarist and sound artist, merges improvised guitar with computer-generated sounds, shaping ambient drones and subtle glitch textures. His work has appeared on various notable music labels, quietly exploring the boundaries of experimental sound.