Risorgi by Michele Andreotti

Cat.#: LONTANO-S-CD62
Release date: 18/7/2025
Format: CD, Digital

The title of the album refers to the historical process of the Italian Risorgimento, from which the source material for the construction of the eight tracks in this work was drawn. The first layer of sound was created by cutting short samples from around fifty works by Italian composers who lived during the Risorgimento period.

The samples were reworked to generate loops of a few measures that repeat incessantly at a fixed metronomic pace of 80 bpm. In this way, it was possible to achieve a total deconstruction of the melodic cores, creating unitary cells of pure harmonic movement devoid of references to the original pieces from which the samples were taken.

The second layer was created through the use of four melodic lines per track, played and recorded in MIDI and assigned to timbres musically consistent with those of the samples used in the first draft of the tracks. The word Risorgi thus takes on a new meaning, becoming the manifestation of the dialogue between life and death and therefore between sound materials (those sampled and those recorded) composed about two centuries apart.

The titles of the individual tracks, all linked to the procedural concept just described, are a tribute to the figure of Giuseppe Mazzini and his connection to esoteric symbolism, of which many themes dear to the Risorgimento are allegorical expressions.

“Sulla terra siamo in continuazione di viaggio, provenienti da altri pianeti, e questa vita che viviamo oggi non è che uno stadio della nostra vita immortale”
(Giuseppe Mazzini, from “Il pensiero religioso, pratico-sociale di Mazzini,” edited by Gaetano Salvemini, 1925)

Risorgi takes on a new meaning, as a synthesis of Mazzini’s spiritual ideas and many underground historical currents of the time, such as the Carboneria, of which Mazzini was a leader.

The cohesion of the sound texture between the two sources of material is ensured through the use of digital emulations of analog tapes, completing a timbral coloration filled with imperfections and sonic aberrations historically impossible for either era, giving Risorgi the final meaning of a symbolic word, an intermediate state, and an interaction between the physical world and the spiritual world.

“A symbol does not signify: it evokes and focuses, assembles and concentrates, in an analogically polyvalent manner, a multiplicity of meanings that cannot be reduced to a single meaning or just any meaning. The symbolic functionality is inseparable from its ‘sacred orientation’ or its hierophanic vision of ‘numinous’ or ‘non-human’ powers to which myths and rites connect the human being, ‘reuniting’ the anthropos and the cosmos through the power of the Logos, which is not language but verb and ‘resurrected’ word, ‘re-created,’ beyond the cultural and social sense of the ‘words of the tribe.’”
(René Alleau - La science des symboles)

Lᴏɴᴛᴀɴᴏ Series is a division of Rohs! Records.

Est. 2018 - Berlin, Germany.

The label is now located in Sardinia, Italy.

“Lontano” is an Italian word meaning far away, a definition reflected in the label’s logo—a range of mountains seen from a distance.

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