This book-length conversation follows the evolution of Giancarlo’s thought from his teenage years and earliest works to his fully-realized sound works, for which he has a formidable reputation in Europe and beyond. Mesostructures contains numerous unpublished archival photos and documents as well as an exhaustive and detailed index of media releases and performances. This enlightening discussion covers the influence of composer Iannis Xenakis and mathematician René Thom on Giancarlo’s composition, the relationship of sound, language, and reality, anthropological frameworks for music, and the art of field-recording. The book also features an introduction by Aram Yardumian, a foreword by Achim Wollscheid (S.B.O.T.H.I., Non Toxique Lost), and an afterword by Ralf Wehowsky (rlw, P16.D4, Permutative Distortion). This edition also features a CD with three new works by Giancarlo Toniutti, unavailable elsewhere.

Giancarlo Toniutti (1963 - ), composer, author, and visual artist, began making music in the late 1970s. Since that time he has released some 20 records, cassettes, and CDs, both self-produced and on labels such as Broken Flag and Astres D’Or. Coming of age in the 1980s, a prodigious decade of home-taping and trading, he contributed to countless compilations, many of which are now sought-after collectors items. His work is mostly electroacoustic and is always concerned with the inner properties of physical materials such as stone, wire, wood, metal, gongs, and occasionally pianos, violins, harps and other instruments. Over the years he has collaborated with musicians such as Conrad Schnitzler, Andrew Chalk, Siegmar Fricke, James Wyness, and his brother Massimo Toniutti. He has mounted numerous sound art installations and live electronic performances across Europe. He lives and works in Udine, northern Italy.

The three pieces on the CD take their titles from an Alyutor folk story and translate as stick for the kidney, stick for the eye and stick for the liver. The first, kəsim‘ujpəlŋən, was composed on commission between 2018 and 2020 and then left unreleased: an investigation of ceramics in various shapes, used mostly in percussive patterns, with related materials and resonances. Toniutti later reworked all of its original recordings into two further compositions, ləla‘ujpəlŋən and punta‘ujpəlŋən, conceived as variations “thoroughly at the mesostructural level”. The material stays largely the same, while the relations between the sounds are taken apart and rebuilt. Each piece, about twenty minutes long, also stands on its own.

Yardumian first wrote to Toniutti in 2008, asking about his early tapes. The daily correspondence behind the book ran from 2022 to 2025. Besides the conversation, the appendices list all of Toniutti's works, with recording dates, sound sources and durations, and his performances since 1984, followed by a bibliography and a further listening section.

Book with CD, 192 pages, 17 x 24 cm, offset printed in black and white with text and images, thread-sewn paperback with colour cover and flaps. Design by Deison, printed by Tipografia Pellegrini / Il Cerchio, Udine. In English. Edition of 500 copies. Errant Bodies Press / Spazio di Hausdorff, T2m26.