MDF | HORVS
36’04”
DANIELE DE SANTIS, IT
OBJECT + DIGITAL RELEASE
CATALOGUE: F90104
EDITION: 100 COPIES
RELEASED APRIL 1, 2010
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DESIGN: DANIELE DE SANTIS & FABIO PERLETTA
1. Isq
2. MFR (music for ringhiera)
3. Led
From the original press release:
"HORVS is a special project-album released by Farmacia901 in April 2010 and developed around three electronic compositions summarising the most experimental contents in MDF’s production. HORVS is a path through sounds, images and symbols, unified in a base-3 system-object that is released in a limited edition of 100 hand-made copies. Every constitutive aspect of this album is based on a triplex inner subdivision; this is mostly evident in the project being presented in the triad of music compositions, artwork and a website. The music is a progressive transfiguration of ultra-material sounds in ethereal abstractions. The graphic elements are involved in a similar mutation. The website is a mirror reflecting the object image and connecting it to the music as a virtual bridge.
HORVS is a musical object and objectual music."
Daniele De Santis is a multi-instrumentalist, percussionist and producer of Apulian origins, currently based between Athens and Berlin. He is also known as sound engineer and curator within the realm of his nomadic platform Dromoscope.
As unfolded by the wide constellation of activities that have seen him involved in recent years, Daniele perpetually dedicates to the development and refinement of his unique instrumental language, which roots in mediterranean and middle-eastern traditions just as in instant composition and abstract electronica, while also feeding on a constant spontaneous practice in the crafting of experimental sound devices and tools. It is the case e.g. of GRÜN project, whose machines embody the specific attempt to conceive composition in terms of circuit design and gestural interactivity with electrical automations.
In the form of a site specific performance/installation, as well as embedded in its related workshop series Homegrown, GRÜN has been hosted by international entities such as Berlin Atonal, CTM Siberia, Strøm, PHONO, Macao, Sunnhordland folkehøgskule and more. In continuity, Prepared Drums project expands his research in the exploration of the boundaries between micro-and macro-tonality, through the design and manufacturing of special non-aerial transducers and their live implementation. Meant on purpose to achieve the difficult goal to over-amplify acoustic percussions without triggering feedback artifacts, Prepared Drums’ microphones are the means for a peculiar augmented drumming, a sound-system-magnified whole topography of the subtle tactile timbres and resonant harmonics which reside in the percussions bodies. While counting appearences in festivals such as Irtijal, Terraforma and SeaNaps, the project has seen in 2019 the release and international showcase (Drums Playing Drums) of Prepared Drums Vol. I LP, published in the form of a handmade dubplate by a joint venture of Dromoscope Editions and Elia Buletti's Das Andere Selbst.
2019 also marks a consolidation of De Santis’ work with producer-curator Rabih Beaini and his imprint Morphine Records, by joining the label’s roster as a new member of the Upperground Orchestra. At the end of the same year, he appears on the drums alongside vocalist-performer Rully Shabara (Senyawa, ZOO) with a site specific performance for Milan’s Macao, hosted by italian independent label Communion, which later in 2020 also releases A Thousand Steps, a special split record seing De Santis Shabara duo in dialogue with the audio-visual experimentation of AI artist-producer Lorem.
De Santis has released music for Communion, Das Andere Selbst, Dromoscope Editions, 901 Editions and more.
ANDREA FERRARIS / SODAPOP
Insieme alla splendida uscita di Kaeba, Farmacia901 insieme a MidiD’unFaune licenzia questo disco degli MDF che esce con grafica corredata di blocchetto di legno serigrafato in bustina. Bizzarria o no della grafica, si tratta comunque di un materiale e di una serie di immagini molto affini al disco, in un certo modo mi ricorda il monolite in legno raffigurato sulla copertina del disco Kaspar Brotzmann/Page Hamilton. In questo caso però non si tratta di pesantezza come massa sonora, Horvs più che altro sembra sospeso fra installazione digitale e musique concrète, da una parte una serie di frequenze e di suoni digitali taglienti che quando vanno in affondo sembrano delle vere e proprie coltellate, dall’altro certi suoni simil concreti sembrano riportare ad una dimensione real time, estemporanea: oggetti e ambiente sonoro che prendono vita.
Se per la prima delle tre tracce quanto fin qui detto bene o male descrive tutto ciò che accade all’interno dei dieci minuti, per il secondo pezzo sembra di essere in una dimensione quasi ghost ambient: nessuna ritmica o suono che sale in picco, quasi una IDM che seppur non melodica ricrea un paesaggio da abissi marini, il tutto suona come un sommergibile da film immerso nel riverbero. La suite conclusiva sembra in linea con lo svilupparsi lineare del secondo episodio e così da una serie di frequenze acute la traccia si sviluppa in un drone che pulsa e non si mantiene in uno sviluppo troppo uniforme. Se per certi versi i venti minuti di chiusura sembrano abbracciare un’idea di pezzo che va dai Coil a Lawrence English fino alla parabola conclusiva di Marc Clifford in (Ch-Vox), dall’altra mi pare evidente che gli intenti del pezzo siano più improntati a rendere un’atmosfera onirica/psichedelica invece che una pesantezza da incubo, quindi se dark-ambient è quello che cercare state sbagliando disco. Un cd molto particolare, “di maniera”, in un certo senso acido, non particolarmente luminoso ma neppure plumbeo, musica elettronica che abbraccia la sound art e certa ambient, non per tutti, ma piuttosto interessante.