* few copies in stock * Enrico Ascoli’s La Manigua is a fascinating creative construction drawing a vast number of field recordings captured in various locations over a number of years, placed in connection with more active instrumental sounds.
Based in Paris but actively part of the scene that has grown up around Ivreatronic, Enrico Ascoli has traveled extensively to various geographies and remote areas, recording and creating sound for documentaries and podcasts. La Manigua, his latest LP, grew from readdressing the material gathered during these adventures and the impulse to rework it into a series of “sound dioramas” that would present a more accurate and developed memory of those experiences... “with listening hyper amplified by microphones, the protean voice of nature mixed itself in a hallucinogenic way with the restlessness of loneliness and the wonder of discovery, giving life to magical and disconcerting inner universes.”
Divided into four compositions, utilising recordings from the Serra de la Bocaina in Brazil, the Sotani of the Huasteca jungle in Mexico and the Selva Lacandona on the border with Guatemala, interspersed with the sounds of wind instruments discovered on Ascoli’s travels - such as the fujara and the Karen horn from Myanmar - and percussion - each work is driven by bubbling textures taken from the natural world, filtered and processed in varying degrees by electronic intervention, sculpting a potent and immersive sense of imagism across the album’s length that shifts between atmospheric and the abstract, peppered with airy harmonics and overtones that dive deep into the soul.
A truly captivating LP that beautifully rounds the vast spectrum of creative adventures covered across the totality of Nuova Sauna Possibile, Enrico Ascoli proves to be an artist of rare vision and skill.