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CD Feature/ Luigi Turra: "texture.vitra"

  Tobias

With a discography comprising of just three EPs and two net releases, Koyuki Sound has already established itself as a label to watch. The 3 inch format allows for tight quality control and strict conceptual coherency, puristic packaging emphasises the preeminence of the music while the harmonious and shapely designs tingle one’s hunter-gatherer instincts. Stylistically, especially, the outfit has established a distinct script: Quiet, discreet and elegant, yet resonant, psychoactive and voluble using nothing but a minimal vocabulary.

After one of Koyuki’s two founders, David Sani, presented his personal vision on double-disc debut “Binaural Beats”, the label’s other head Luigi Turra now follows in his footsteps. As different as their perspectives may be, there is a clear continuation of certain aspects, as well as an obvious pool of shared aesthetics and techniques. At the heart of their art lies a shared fondness for the lower case movement, for its focus on silent sounds and its analytic methodology, which surgically dissects each musical element to work out its essence in a game of deep sonic penetration.

The principal characteristic of Turra, at least on “Texture.Vitra”, is his preference for timbres culled from walks and hikes through nature. While his friends and colleagues within the microsound community, lazily sat behind their PC monitor, content themselves with extending their microphone to the readily accessible areas of their room, he searches for sources outside. Instead of augmenting the capacities of barely perceivable utterances, his approach implies a backwards translation of subtle, yet clearly audible sounds to a cosmos of whisper.

The reason why this method exercises a strong fascination is because quietude, rather than alarming loudness, exposes the qualities and beauty of these field recordings most strongly. While most sound sources remain opaque even after repeated listening, there is a short passage which clearly seems to stem from the composer pulling and dragging stones. In its raw form, this would hardly have been an exciting proposition, but by filtering out every impurity, Turra insteads presents the listener with a sonic Jung'ean archetype – an intruiging and intense statement.

Just under twenty minutes, “Texture.Vitra” is essentially made up of several similarly arranged scenes, some of them concentrating on finely rasping scratches over a billowing drone, others on mantrically gyrating rumblings and sharply edged needle-stabs. Throughout, they manifest themselves as islands amidst an ocean of complete silence and as musical still lives, almost static and infinitely comforting in their reduction to the most important characteristics and movements.

Luigi Turra is not a manically prolific artist and since leaving the netlabel scene in favour of physical releases, he has produced just two full-lengths and this delicate 3’’ over the last one and a half years. This, too points to a desire for tight quality control and strict conceptual coherence. Every sound holds the danger of destroying the fine musical net he weaves and he has wisely chosen to place them carefully.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Luigi Turra
Homepage: Koyuki Sound Records