Output 01

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"Output 01" is a recording of some of the live highlights of the first Sintesi festival, held in the deconsecrated church of San Severo al Pendino in the medieval part of Naples in 2002, and is aimed to be the first of a series of audio documents that will continue with the festival’s second edition proper this December.

All three artists here are recorded live with the church’s ambience left intact, used to best effect by Leafcutter John who seems to be working with the fantastic echo that the space provides. His much-lauded folk roots aren’t much on evidence here, as he spends the first part of a ten-minute piece apparently testing his tools and the sound environment around him, with a few plonks of what could be a very-deeply tuned mandolin, or else a metallic percussion instrument. After a while he finds his feet and settles into a slightly dubby and somewhat eerie groove. Very pleasurable.

Local boys Retina.it (part of the Hefty stable) go for some seriously sub-aquatic beats and squelches on "Lost in the Church", a real-time improvisation with a naggingly-familiar horn sample, beaming in from a radio station from another planet and a ticking clock giving colour to their beats and clicks. The twenty-minute piece is vaguely reminiscent of a gentler Two Lone Swordsmen on a very minimal tip, and as it expands and evolves over twenty minutes the listener’s attention doesn’t flag once, which is quite an achievement.

Terrae finish up with two moody tracks which one may define as "post-techno" (any takers for that one?) – beats are replaced by clicks and rustles, while extremely gentle basslines keep time to the rings and whistles whirring overhead.

The CD also includes a multimedia track with text (in Italian only, unfortunately), a nice short film of the church and the bands in action as well as some real tech-fetish shots (for those of you who drool over the sight of laptops and mixing desks). Looking at an 18th century baroque church is much nicer than looking at spoggy blokes in headphones hunched over laptops anyday.

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