Title: Listening - Monday, Nov 14 2022 Date: 2022-11-14 Tags: listening Summary: Giacomo Fiore and Danny Clay’s Turntable Drawing No. 16
This is a process-based album (described on the bandcamp release page) but what’s really compelling here is the poetry of the sound.
Fiore’s guitar and synthesizer float lightly in slow harmony over the surface of Clay’s popping and hissing prepared records. The album has a sculptural shape, this isn’t furniture music or a time-dialated soundscape, it takes you on a walk through the forest and stops sometimes by the river to sit. Fiore’s guitar moves from clean Playthroughs-eqsue undulations to a Frippertronics with attitude anthemic lyricism that pulls everything from start to finish.
The album pivots on the guitar, but the whole thing feels like an ensemble piece with consistenly developed texture and an attention to pacing.
It put me in mind of my favorite Keith Freund record, Constant Comments which has a similar talent for lyrical guitar-driven texture. There’s a kinship in the harmonic language, too, which I can’t help but wonder is in some part related to a comfortable way to voice harmony on the guitar? I can’t put my finger on it, but something about the wide, complex-yet-consonent voicings is done so well in both.