<<  -- 2 --  Keith Bramich    Beautiful and convincing

Avanti la tre (1991-95) from the film Passaggi (1991) combines Italian rail platform announcements -- 'Avanti la tre! Avanti la tre!' ('Number three forward') -- and other railway sounds (recorded by Luca Scarzella) with synthesised music in a rather light and dance-like way -- perhaps as a 'bridge passage' accompanying a long scene from the film. To my ear, the opening section which begins with the platform announcement callsign doesn't quite work, although the effect could be very different when accompanying the film. Less successful than American minimalist works using sampled and repeated speech patterns, but the synthesised music section [listen -- track 3, 4:27-5:27] works well to create the effect of motion and the passing of time.

Dentro di Sé (1987-1998) is from the sound installation Frammenti di un discorso amoroso for the 1987 Roland Barthes exhibition at the Centre Culturel Français in Rome. A kind of Italian laid-back Romantic minimalism -- without the energy of Reich or Adams -- failed to hold my interest for all of its sixteen minutes.

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