CD - Ahornfelder
The sound is deep and suggestive in "Città Utopica". This project by Burkhard Friedrich was created in the guise of an environmental installation enriched by visual elements and traversed by intense drones, digital iterations and synthetic frequencies. The cavernous plot is full of auditory stimuli, pulsating an orchestral energy, strongly reflecting the operatic origins of the author. The record unravels many relevant layers, overlapping them in a complete way, creating dark atmospheres, swollen streams, swirling eddies and eccentric concretions. Along the 55-minute continuum of sound it's possible to perceive startled tones, tremulous but powerful abstractions, all organized into a fully perceptive space that leaves no room for distraction. The combinative microstructures explore the unique utopian potential that exists in the tension between imagined reality and formal models that can represent truth. A virtual reference is also made to the issue of the "ideal city" in connection with some models of shared spaces, including some extreme architectural theories about utopian but very disciplined social organisations. These tensions make the electro-acoustic editing more vibrant and fruitful, and also help to align the rhythm of the projections with the purely musical elements, with a performative result. Although they are behaving independently, all the musical and visual components here give life to a new, much more effective aesthetic construct.
Aurelio Cianciotta