Alio Die & Luciano Daini, End of an Era (Hic Sunt Leones)

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Alio Die works more often than not with collaborators who share his aesthetic sense as well as nationality. In this way, and by giving them equal billing, he and his label Hic Sunt Leones provide an invaluable showcase where the rest of the world can discover a whole slew of relatively unknown ambient artists from Italy.

It is also interesting, as we watch the mature Alio Die´s career evolve, to see him relegate electronics to the back seat, increasingly choosing instead to generate his drones and soundscapes with acoustic instruments.

This album is a cross between a kind of pan-global ethnic sound - all those wind instruments - and an almost sacral, late Medieval feeling - had he been born five hundred years ago, Alio Die would no doubt have composed for the church.

Luciano Daini´s cello lends the title track an essential focal point to an otherwise abstract setting that sounds like things quietly falling apart, or gently being pulled apart by angels. Of course the end of any one era means the beginning of another - by the time we reach this point on the album, we´re still only a third of the way through.

The next phase of the album is introduced with a whiff of Arabian "Desert´s Breath", which heralds "Il Volo Assunto", featuring the album´s most exquisite textures. While "L´Inequivocabile Quintessenza" rambles too much (ambient improv gone astray), the closing track "Nocturnal Solution" brings us in for a very soft and pleasant landing.