FRANCESCO CAVALIERE - Xylomania (Edições CN)

FRANCESCO CAVALIERE - Xylomania (Edições CN) Xylo-Mania is a concise collection of beautiful computer experiments. Using PRAAT, a software to analyse and manipulate speech on a signal basis, Cavaliere brings to life yet another part of his grand world. A world reading like a Landolfi or Gogol story; where the fantastic, the imagination and the creative meet. Here’s an artist inhabiting the Italian heritage - magic realism, flamboyant thinking, and self-confident harmonization - soaking up references and dissolving it into a body of non-academic, autodidact work. Creating a dynamic oeuvre ranging from graphic works, art installations, music and fantastic story writing. Originally this release was created for Francesco’s recent Japan concerts (October 2017) produced in an edition of only 10 copies, but I deemed this such a nice addition to his catalogue, thus we decided to re-release the cassette and include some bonus material. 

"Xylo-Mania is an abstraction of my obsession for xylophones and idiophones; grounded in studies of ethnomusicology and organology - the history of musical instruments. When in these days one is able to play a perfect sounding alien xylophone through a USB keyboard or even directly on a laptop, so many ideas finally can come true... 

So this piece is the manifestation of the sound in my mind when I could play a perfect xylophone piece but I finally decided not to do it! Since you asked me to add new material I included a final track that could actually be a genuine virtual MIDI - xylophone piece. I tried to imagine what I would actually do with this tool nowadays, and built it into a song for 'room listening'. In the last four years, voice and storytelling was my focus, contrary to my alphabetical sound effects archives. I ended up to use and create patches with this speech synthesis program to process and remember my personal experiences in the ’90s. It's 2000 utopia sound medical stuff.. which I used my self and I’m actually really interested in, you know like those autogenous training, cybernetic psychological tapes, Cds, or audio books.. that Xylo - Mania. (F Cavaliere) " 

Cavaliere lives and works in Berlin where he is represented by the Grimmuseum gallery. His previous records where produced by Hundebiss (IT) and Troglo Sound (IT). He also plays in the project Sea Urchin together with his partner Leila Hassan; they released their debut LP on the Belgian Kraak label in 2016. Furthermore, he is also in Green Music, a collaborative project with Japanese / French artist Tomoko Sauvage.