Daniele Santagiuliana - Confinement
As always, the news keeps telling us that no... Corona won´t go away, it will stay with us... like the flu. It will linger, and stay around like a homeless cat. The same goes with Daniele Santagiuliana (the Italian guy behind Testing Vault), who has just released his Covid-19 inspired piece of work simply called...Confinement.
As you all probably know, Italy was one of the first countries in Europe who was seriously hit with the virus. I remember seeing on the news, rows of military trucks carrying the dead... and yes! It looked like something from a B-movie Zombie-Holocaust flick! So yes... the whole country of Italy was (or still is) in confinement. The same goes with other countries like Brazil, UK, Mexico... the list goes on.
So Mr. Santagiuliana made this interesting confined jewel in confinement (Out on CD!), so let us hear and examine what he has come up with then!.
The first track Mediocre begins with haunting and looped ritualistic drones, with some interesting chopped radio-static hiding in the multi-layered drones. An interesting moody percussive-sound gives the track an extra layer of spookiness (VERY old-school CMI´ish kind of intro!). From then on it, the track changes its path and warps into a glitch and spoken word part. A lovely ear-opener!
The second track A Marriage offers a lot of interesting sounds. Clicks and cuts, automatic thumping sounds, moans from a ghost, and offcourse the spoken words. Really haunting stuff sofar, with the C19-virus.. everything looks like a bloody ghost town!
The Next and third track has a long track title... The Living Room Walls Are Filled With 426 Black Nails! Why 426 I say?... Maybe it´s the size of Santagiuliana´s apartment, that these black nails (symbolizing C19) prevent him from going out!. As you could probably imagine, the consistent post-apocalyptic ambient-soundtrack mood is still there. Here we have the sliding and slicing sound of creepy violin strings. There is also a windy sound here, probably the kind of wind you´ll notice when nothing is happening outside.
The Fourth track Translucent goes back to that kind of... erotic sounding drone-loop thing. There is a certain vibe that reminds me of the early Ordo Equilibrio (which is the best). Imagine a Wagner opera in slow-motion, or just imagine the apocalypse in slow motion... you know what I mean!.
The Fifth track Dying Horses offers melodic and melancholic guitar-sounds and spoken words about taken care of yourself, kind of Swans feel here.
The rest of the album (20 minutes) continues the adventurous, cold, melancholic, and hypnotic path... It almost feels like being in the cold north! What I really like (like the early review with him) is the sense of mysticism (Like watching a BIG and misty horizon from a tall building). The sort of inner-self sort of-a-feel you get when you start taking notice of things... you usually don´t notice. The sound is incredibly superb made, and everything about it seems very honest and sincere. Something which comes from an artist who doesn't have anything to lose, it actually feels that Mr. Santagiuliana is in the room with you! Recommendable for fans of .... somewhere between early Ordo Equilibrio, Coil, Nurse With Wound, and those spoken words albums by Current 93. I like this one... ALOT!
Bandcamp (band):