* Limited edition of 100 copies, gold etched title on front cover. * Last year, Holidays delivered “Ad Invisibilia”, their first LP working with the composer Andrea Penso. It totally blew our minds, making his return to the label with “Oh! Uomo” that much more exciting. Penso has been active on the Italian experimental scene for the better part of two decades, working within collaborative projects like Surava and We Wait for the Snow, as well as issuing more than a dozen releases under the moniker Selaxon Lutberg, in addition to running his own imprint, the widely celebrated Invisibilia Editions, since 2020. Increasingly, over the last few years, Penso has stepped from behind the curtains of monikers and begun issuing work under his own name, “Oh! Uomo” - the first vinyl pressing of a tiny cassette edition, issued by Canti Magnetici in 2022 - being the most recent.
“Oh! Uomo” comprises two tape-loop pieces composed by Penso. The first, "Oh! Uomo (Parte I)”, is based on a fragment of Béla Bartók's “Der Stampfer (Stamping Dance)”, from his folk music studies. The opening sequence, recorded on magnetic tape, was cut and transformed into a tape loop, then manipulated analogically and digitally to change its tone and progression. Eerie and strikingly beautiful, warped melodies unfurl and semi-broken states through a gauzy haze, as though they are being heard across vast expanses of time to a startling effect, producing something incredibly captivating from the simplest of means.
The second piece, "Oh! Uomo (Diaspora)”, is constructed from two overlapped and manipulated tape loops: one is an Armenian folk melody for harmonium solo recorded in the early 20th Century, and the other a modern dance audio cassette, found by chance in a van parking lot in Turin. Inspired by the work of Angela Ricci Lucchi and Yervant Gianikian, to whom the piece is dedicated, “Oh! Uomo (Diaspora)” takes on a stranger sense of abstraction across the album’s second side, sculpting ribbing ambiences from obscured fragments of voice and droning, subdued harmonium, as it draws the ear toward the monumentality found in the tiniest details.
Easily some of the most engaging contemporary tape collage work we’ve encountered in recent years, Andrea Penso’s “Oh! Uomo” is one of those albums that can singlehandedly infuse a deep sense of hope in the future of musique concrète. Truly stunning, it’s issued by Holidays in a highly limited black vinyl edition of 100 copies, housed in an engraved sleeve, and we can’t recommend it enough.
