and/37

and/OAR is extremely pleased to present Ki - a mysterious three part work
that spans the length of three CDs.

Luigi Turra: various instruments, objects and field recordings.

A first version of Enso was originally released by Small Voices in 2007, but
the release suffered from peak-volume distortion due to being mastered too
loud, plus the use of compression altered the sound of the work. Here, it is
free from distortion and compression. Ancient Silence was originally
self-released as a limited edition CDR EP in 2007. Presented here for the
first time is the full length version. Shasekishu is a previously unreleased
third part of the Ki trilogy.

Ki traverses and transcends dimensions of time and space, so all notions of
past, present and future defy linear logic. Ephemeral occurrences turn into
frozen memories suspended in the air like clouds of dust in sunlight. An epic
and outstanding example of reductionist sound cinema. A truly visionary work.

Luigi Turra is a musique concrète composer and graphic designer whose
main interest is in the aural balance between silence and tactile perception
of sound. Apart from and/OAR, Turra's work has also been published by
Trente Oiseaux, Non Visual Objects, White_Line Editions, Dragon's Eye
Recordings, Unfathomless, Nitkie, mAtter, Koyuki and Small Voices among
others.

Packaged in a 6 panel wallet with a middle tube pocket (containing CD #2).

Reviews
__________________________________________________________________________________

Neural (March 2012)
Luigi Turra presents three CDs in a single release for and/OAR, including an
equal number of extended and distinct compositions - Enso, Ancient Silence
and Shasekishu respectively. From the beginning the trilogy by the Italian
sound artist imprints itself in guise of a full-bodied electroacoustic
continuum but with hints of minimalism. "Enso", had already been published
in Small Voices in 2007 and the current version corrects the mistakes that
were made in mastering that seminal version. "Ancient Silence", too, had
already seen the light in a self-produced edition and now appears in a more
dilated version, wrapping us in the spires of a surgically articulated and
essential sound, fascinating and deep. Only "Shasekishu" - then - embodies
the new course of manipulations for the maestro based in Schio. The
composer has already published for labels such as Non Visual Objects,
Dragon's Eye, Trente Oiseaux, Koyuki and Unfathomless, to cite just a few.
The approach is still typical Turra, with sounds permeated with oriental
influences, aesthetics and philosophy leaking out from every groove,
all-involving matter-energy that permeates every molecule of our ecosystem.
In the forty-five minutes of the recording the envelopes are thinner and
imbued with rhythmic jumps, synthetic drones and digital eddies before
becoming gentler, more melodic, even more tactile, deeply mysterious and
immersive, emotional and elliptical. A flawless result that consecrates this
musician as one of the most interesting of the Italian school.
(Aurelio Cianciotta)

UN(E)ÉNERGUMÈNES (December 2011)
Bouclez vos chakras à la con, laissez les sarcasmes au vestiaire, une
inspiration ventrale profonde et une dose massive de concentration comme
pour un jeu télévisé. Un peu d'encens, du gravier à ratisser sous les pieds
nus, tonsure de rigueur, et on va pouvoir appréhender le triple « KI» de Luigi
Turra, triple anachronisme dans ce monde de pétrole brut obnubilé par
l'éloge de la vitesse des échanges biaisés en bourse plutôt que par le
temps qui s'écoule le long d'une rivière... Luigi Turra est un compositeur de
musique concrète italien fortement imprégné de spiritualité orientale (ben
tiens), et qui recherche le point d'équilibre auditif entre le silence et une
perception tactile du fait sonore (ce qui fait plus sérieux). Il avait auparavant
sorti en collaboration avec un certain Shinkei (?), « YU », une petite perle de
minimalisme zen qui, en plus d'évoluer sur les marges de la musique, flirte
délicatement avec les limites de l'audible. On ne va pas vraiment changer de
paysage avec le présent « KI », même si cette fois on peut l'écouter sans
avoir à pousser l'ampli dans ses retranchements pour capter l'essence du
moment.

Malgré une apparente homogénéité des 3 disques qui le composent (1 :
Enso, 2: Ancient Silence, 3 : Shasekishu), chaque morceau semblant être le
prolongement naturel du précédent, « KI» est en fait une compilation de
pièce écrites sur plusieurs années, certaines déjà éditées en tant que telles.
Luigi Turra, prend donc le temps de poser sa vision organique et ascétique
du son sans l'imposer. Tel un moine zen en train de ratisser encore et
encore son jardin de graviers blancs, il développe ses manipulations
mystérieuses d'objets pas forcément identifiés, noyées dans ce qui pourrait
être la vibration prolongée un gong. A l'ombre de l'évidence, il préfère la
luminosité du mystère, koan zen oscillant entre réalité crue et abstraction
suspendue. Sans réel fil narratif, le mouvement se veut ample, profond
comme une lente musique d'immersion dont la sérénité qui s'en dégage est
sans cesse travaillée par une tension impalpable. La mise en relief de
gestes profanes par le prisme déformant de sons concrets, renforcent le
côté rituel presque obsessionnel, empêchant à l'ensemble de s'empêtrer
dans la facilité d'une boue new-age des plus racoleuses. Musique sans
plans ni ordonnancement précis. Juste les traces d'une errance méditative ;
beauté répétée du hasard du geste.

S'il est évidemment peu digeste de s'enfiler à la suite les 2h30 cumulés des
trois disques, chacun d'entre eux peut s'écouter séparément. Quarante cinq
minutes c'est déjà pas mal pour effectuer une sieste tronquée, le sens
auditif en éveil, l'il intérieur qui observe le souffle de sa respiration
s'écouler. Il suffit d'y croire. En tout cas on n'aura jamais été aussi près de
toucher du doigt le bruit du bruit. Et c'est si rare, par les temps putassiers qui
courent. (L'Un)

Spiritual Archives (November 2011)
Luigi Turra's second appearance in the and/OAR catalogue (not long ago a
piece included in a magnificent compilation, tribute to Michelangelo
Antonioni). Active for years in the experimental music movement, highly
esteemed by people devoted to musique concrète, Turra is an Italian sound
artist and graphic designer who stood out for his personal, refined,
minimalist style, conveyed in works for labels such as Trente Oiseaux, Non
Visual Objects, Dragon's Eye Recordings, Koyuki, Unfathomless, just to
mention some.

"Ki", a trilogy, over two hours of audio contents, a three-disc set, finely
packaged, two-thirds consisting of old material, reissued to correct
mastering errors occurred in the original release on Small Voices, dated
2007 (the first disc, "Enso") or now in full-length version (the second one,
"Ancient Silence", self-released the same year). "Shasekishu" represents a
new chapter and brings the project to completion.

"Enso" is split into three parts, the initial segment featuring a weave of
sounds produced by traditional instruments (shakuhachi, pipa, percussion),
sometimes untreated, sometimes reprocessed or arranged with other
artificial intrusions. Heavy incidence of echoes on the whole, to give sonic
expansion and intense deepness, concretely perceptible. The use of
environmental recordings, wisely managed, becomes evident further on: it's
a subtle, inconspicuous presence (string touches, repeated tinklings and
woodwind effects have the lead role). Only in the second part they achieve
consistency, sharing the scene with both instrumental and vocal
performance. Slightly different, even softer approach in the last section,
without giving up the main framework.

"Ancient Silence", the second CD, reveals, explicitly, a definite compositional
tendency. It's structured on several distinct instances (carefully joined
together), primarily based on sombre tones originated from field recordings,
with the add of other sound particles extracted from instruments (a delightful
metallic reverberation, bamboo flute whispers) or captured somewhere (a
periodic knocking, odd, confused noises, a constant drip of water).

"Shasekishu", the last episode, seems to be a further processing stage in
the saga. Articulated on different levels, it starts with an amalgam of concrete
sounds embedded in a minimalist module and large recourse to
electronics, then a gradual transition into more melodic, almost meditative
phases made of resounding bells, flute insertions, a few percussive
touches, a solemn chant. Lastly a compound of all these elements.

Haunting, enchanting work: Turra at his best, so far... (Giuseppe Angelucci)

Blow Up (October 2011)
Triple CD Luigi Turra, composer active in the musique concrete, and on file
with a series of albums for labels like Trente Oiseaux, Dragon's Eye
Recordings and Koyuki. The monumental "Ki" collects in fact, for two-thirds
work already published earlier in some way incomplete: "Enso" published in
2007 by Small Voices in a year is not completely mastered, "Ancient Silence"
self-released the same year in a limited edition and small distance (EP),
which on this occasion is presented in extended version. Following the
thread of his Free Sample, Turra moves in the neighborhood of the
stagnation sound, patiently working environment and except instrumental
sounds to create a complex and bombastic piece divided into three acts. In
"Enso" is perceived the slow movement was transitional between music and
landscape environment: it is in dichotomy (alternation, empty
sovraposizione) between these two elements that show the dramatic tension
that is built on the disc, the soundscape is dominated by eastern coloring,
marked by the use of tools such as pipe and shakuhachi.

In "Ancient Silence" Turra plunges deep into an investigation through the
inertia acoustic Limina: Long and dark periods of silence are just ruffled by
small metallic resonances, reflections from water, from distant and
intermittent echoes of an imaginary world underground. It 'a mood that
sealed the new "Shasekishu" perpetual, stir in the dichotomous jumble of
sounds and silences of the two previous episodes: soft sound objects first
as refracted in a prism flint, then Franti in muted voices singing far, finally
drowned in the vacuum of the gloss finish. (Leandro Pisano)

Vital Weekly (September 2011)
Over the years I have reviewed a whole bunch of releases by Luigi Turra,
various of them in collaboration with others, such as Shinkei and
Christopher McFall. Here we have a trilogy of works, each around 45 to 48
minutes. The first one, 'Enso', was previously released by Small Voices, but
not mastered properly, the second, 'Ancient Silence' as a very limited CDR
EP and now in its full version, while the third, 'Shasekishu' is a previously
unreleased work. That's about the extent of the information we have on this
trilogy. From Turra's website we learn not a more: "Luigi Turra (b. 1975) is a
musique concrete composer and graphic designer. His main interest is in
the aural balance between silence and tactile perception of sound. His work
is published from the labels such as non visual objects (Austria), and/OAR
(USA), Koyuki (Italy), White_Line (UK)". For these works he uses
instruments, objects and field recordings, but the instruments are not really
specified. I hear voices, maybe guitar, maybe percussion, the shakuhachi. Its
quite interesting to go this deep with someone's music, 120 or so minutes of
that gives a pretty good idea of what someone does - although perhaps a bit
long to play all at once. It sheds a light on how Turra composes, which is in a
rather 'loose' way. He collates various events together and layers them, and
makes a mix that reveals a constant flow of these events. Now we could call
this ambient music, but its very much music without much use of
synthesizers, but rather very loosely based sound events of processed field
recordings, processed instruments, sound effects and silence thrown in, at
seemingly random times. This is the kind of ambient music we don't hear a
lot, and I was thinking of the old band Sema, especially at 'Notes From
Underground', although with Turra its harder to know what the instruments
are, save perhaps for the shakuhachi which can be recognized throughout.
An excellent work here all around - for those early autumn nights.
(Frans de Waard)

Scrapyard Forecast (August 2011)
Two very stunning releases to get to today from Dale Lloyd's impressive
and/OAR and either/OAR labels (OAR = Overheard And Rendered). The
central branch of Lloyd's label is the and/OAR division, which focuses mainly
on works that incorporate environmental sounds with an avant-garde
awareness.

Luigi Turra fits nicely into the and/OAR model as there is much here that
aligns with the environmental, and certainly also the avant-garde. I first
became aware of Turra's work through his captivating – though blandly titled
– Tactile.Surface CD, a collaboration with like-minded artist Christopher
McFall. On Ki, we get to see what Turra can do on his own, and there is
plenty of material to do that with, the album spanning three discs and
clocking in at nearly 2½ hours.

The opening disc, Enso, which was originally released in 2007 on the Small
Voices label (though was apparently mastered too loudly) immediately
brings Organum's Vacant Lights to mind, with its indiscernible tactile
movements, like footsteps and the scurrying of rats; a flute playing
alongside. Unlike David Jackman and the crew he assembled that day for
the Vacant Lights sessions, Turra brings in other instruments to accompany
the objects he records with. The methodical plucks of a stringed instrument
– possibly a guitar, maybe something more exotic – can be heard in the latter
half of Enso 1, along with percussion, played more texturally than as a back
beat, and what is probably a myriad of bowls and bells. Turra weaves field
recordings into this expansive composition, and ultimately evokes a sort of
languid – although precisely calculated – dance with his sounds, the third
movement being particularly nice.

Disc two, Ancient Silence, picks up in similar vein to how Enso left off, though
is more psychologically jarring in scope. The sound of chimes penetrating
through a blackened ambience around the 10 minute mark are a stand out,
eventually giving way to sounds of metal being bowed, along with more of the
aforementioned tactility and flute playing. This section of the trilogy is a much
darker affair than its predecessor, though still keeping in form with the bigger
picture. On Shasekishu, the closer, Turra takes a magnifying glass to many
of the background elements of the first discs and moves them to the fore.
The piece creaks, fizzes, and clicks and pops as a gentle stream, a flicker of
a fire here and a rattle of a vent or strike of a bell there; also some occult
chanting and pipe recordings not dissimilar to the pressurized drones
produced by Jim Haynes and Michael Gendreau. Ki is a massive work that is
a lot to take in but very consistent and very good. (Adrian Dziewanski)

Textura (August 2011)
With three CDs weighing in at 138 minutes, Ki is an epic, three-part work of
so-called “reductionist sound cinema” by musique concrète composer Luigi
Turra, who's previously issued material on labels such as Trente Oiseaux,
Dragon's Eye Recordings, and Koyuki. Scant details about the recording are
provided, though we can report that Turra is wholly responsible for the
recording's compositions and sounds, and uses various instruments,
objects, and field recordings to bring them into being. It's tactile material in
the extreme, with the unique timbres of the various sound sources presented
in all of their individuating clarity during the three discs' long-form
meditations. Two of the release's three parts were previously released, the
first disc's “Ki 1: Enso” in 2007 on Small Voices in an imperfectly mastered
version and the second self-released as a limited-edition CD-R EP in 2007
and heard in the and/OAR set for the first time in its full-length version.

Presented in three parts, the material on the first disc's “Ki 1: Enso” exudes
an Eastern character due to the presence of instrument sounds associated
with the Far East, such as the pipa and shakuhachi. The first part presents a
free-flowing and patiently unfolding journey that weaves together—
sometimes alternating between—musical and field recordings-based
passages: after Turra inaugurates the piece with a bell strike, violent
percussive ruptures, footsteps, and the playing of a wooden (perhaps
shakuhachi) flute appear; a range of field recordings sounds follows—
ambient sounds of the natural outdoors and the crunchy footsteps of a figure
trudging through grassy terrain—until the returning bell strike signals the
piece's end. The second part moves from an introductory episode of bird
chirps, drum noises and low-pitched string plucks into a somewhat eerie
nightscape of haunted tones and ghostly atmospherics, with at one point
wordless voices erupting in an anguished moan. The final part of “Ki 1:
Enso” unfolds as a dramatic, pipa-plucked plod with droning field recordings
billowing on all sides before its musical elements, in the opening CD's most
memorable passage, turn mournful, with the powerfully affecting mood
mitigated somewhat by the persistent punctuation of field recording noises.

The second and third CDs are both forty-five-minute, single-movement
settings. The aptly titled “Ki 2: Ancient Silence” opts for an explorative
approach that Turra pitches at a subdued level in terms of volume and
dynamics. Field recordings and musical elements again intermingle, with
pages turning among the former and agitated percussive clatter the latter.
Though the presentation is at times extremely minimal—during one episode,
the sound consists of nothing more than water droplets and the residual
echo following from them—the trip remains engaging nevertheless, due in
large part to the continual shifts in character from one episode to the next.
Patches of silence sometimes separate said episodes, while reverberant
swathes of shimmering tones form bridges between them in others. The
sound elements themselves aren't wholly unlike those heard on the first
disc—percussion and flute sounds appear again—but their presentation is
on the whole slightly more low-key by comparison. “Shasekishu", the
previously unreleased third part of the Ki trilogy, perpetuates the unhurried
flow and wide-ranging character of the middle disc (the title, incidentally,
translates into English as “ Sand and Pebbles ” and is also the title
associated with a thirteenth-century, five-volume collection of Buddhist
parables). Not surprisingly, granular percussion sounds figure into the
presentation, as do bowls, bells, flute, and even chanting, and as a result the
meditative piece develops a highly aromatic and evocative ambiance over the
course of its forty-five minutes. There's no lessening of attention to detail in
the work's final part, and despite the length of the entire three-disc journey
and its generally slow unfolding, the listener remains engaged up to the final
moments. (Ron Schepper)