(2021) Paolo Angeli - Jar'a


Review:
A sound explorer and artistic orchestrator, Paolo Angeli is known for playing a prepared Sardinian guitar, a crossbreed instrument provided with additional strings which are bowed or plucked, an added bridge, pedal-operated hammers and pick-ups. This album features a six-movement suite, recorded live in Barcelona, although it was created, edited and mixed in his native island and inspired by the Maddalena archipelago and its giare, inland plateaux (hence the title Jar’a). Visionary, multilayered and challenging, Angeli’s music recalls Sardinian traditional modes, ambient, free improvisation, post-rock and much more. Jar’a investigates the spatiality of sound, as the listener is taken to unfamiliar sonic territories, such as in the short opener ‘Ea’, where the ostinato fuses with plucked strings, paving the way to the dark drone of the 18-minute title-track, a stream of sound symbolically narrating the voyage back home. ‘Futti ’Entu’ recreates the excitement of celebration in a sort of homecoming to Angeli’s native land, while ‘Sùlu’, the album’s climax, showcases the tension between the deep, guttural vocal improvisation of Omar Bandinu (from Tenores di Bitti ‘Mialinu Pira’) in dialogue with Angeli’s singing, whereas the flow of guitar leads to post-rock terrain. The complementarity of acoustic and electronic textures dominates ‘Lanci’ and lead straight to ‘Groppo’, which offers a delicate arpeggio, a cantu a tenòre bass voice counterpointing the distorted guitar with the sounds of wind and crashing waves. Angeli weaves a unique aesthetic and Jar’a is a great achievement.





Track Listing:
01 - Ea
02 - Jar'a
03 - Futti 'entu
04 - Sùlu
05 - Lanci
06 - Groppo


Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk, world
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits