Never Known, Once in a Lifetime (Afe)

text

"Another friendly edition" is the classy little CDR label founded and run by Andrea Marutti. Today Marutti is an established and admired ambient artist, but he has a long history of experimenting with genres stretching back to the early nineties and releasing (mostly solo) material under a variety of pseudonyms, including Never Known. Several years ago he founded Afe to showcase - in handsome rectangular cardboard sleeves - a roster of singular works by singular artists generally filed under the category "ambient".

In April 2007 he reissued his own sophomore effort, Once in a Lifetime, recorded thirteen years earlier. Remasting music Marutti claims was made with "poor equipment, which included several tape recorders, cheap microphones and objects", he also freshened things up a bit by adding a few sythesizer brush strokes. The music on Once in a Lifetime is darkish, in the sense of "primitive" - it seems like we´re in a place where many taboos circumscribe existence. These tracks are sketches, grand vistas indeed, but of regions you really ought not to be in. Some of these sketches are more filled-in and detailed, like "Through the Gate", out of whose haze of drone emerges a soft, distant tribal chant with powerful suggestive force.

This is clearly ambient of an early vintage - Enovian, one might call it, recalling the low-key but high impact work Brian Eno created on albums like "Apollo" and "Music for Films" - big on ideas and low on ostentation. It takes you somewhere utterly foreign and new.

http://www.aferecords.com