Alessandro Monti, Chris Cutler

New and old compositions for Luigi Russolo’s legendary Intonarumori. After publishing his visionary manifesto, the Art of Noises, in 1913, the futurist painter Luigi Russolo designed and built a revolutionary family of new instruments with which to compose with noise: black, wooden boxes, fitted with huge acoustic horns, crank-handles (to drive them) and levers (to vary the pitch). They came in different varieties – designed to give composers access to five of what Russolo had identified as ‘the six families of noise’, namely: 1. Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs, Booms 2. Whistling, Hissing, Puffing 3. Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling 4 Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Buzzing, Crackling, Scraping 5. Noises obtained by beating on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc. 6. Voices of animals and people, Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots, Howls, Death rattles, Sobs. There followed concerts and the obligatory riots – and then war intervened; and although Russolo resumed the project afterwards it was always too extreme for the musical world to adopt, and so Russolo remained until the end of his life, a lone voice in the wilderness. By the end of the Second World War all the surviving instruments had been lost or destroyed. Until, 52 years later, in 1977, the Venice Biennale commissioned early music specialist and instrument builder Piero Verardo to research and reconstruct some of the instruments for their festival. He built twenty different varieties – and seven of these are what made this record possible.

Alessandro Monti visited Professor Verardo and recorded a number of demonstrative performances on the reconstructed instruments. He then selected three percussionists: Chris Cutler (from Henry Cow, Art Bears, Cassiber, Pere Ubu…), Karpinski (from Reportaz) and Sudnick (from Zga) to compose pieces for them. They came up with three very different approaches, which are documented here, along with short assembly by Monti himself. Also on this CD are two rare-as-hens-teeth recordings of orchestral works composed using the original instruments in the 1920s, and recorded here for the first time using the reconstructions. Beautifully packaged in a threefold digipack featuring four impressive paintings by Futurist Ivo Pannaggi and an explanatory text.  The subscription edition comes with a very limited numbered reprint of Russolo’s manifesto The Art of Noises, a prophetic and luminous essay that anticipates Cage’s Future of Music: Credo by a quarter of a century.