Grandpa by Matteo Uggeri

Matteo Uggeri’s approach to musical composition has always been related to his personal experience in life; to recent, or more distant, memories. Differing from other experimental artists who also explore field recordings, he often delves within the walls of his own house, or those of his close acquaintances and family, for inspiration. The recent rediscovery, during his last house move, of an old cassette dating back to the 8th of December 1976, threw him back to the day when Lucio, his paternal grandfather, sort of interviewed Matteo when he was about two and half years old.

That shabby hissing tape became the starting point of a long composition, completed in one long night of July 2016. An ambient composition with a looped four minutes melody (gifted to him by Vincenzo Nava, another Italian musician known as Dramavinile), is interspersed with sparse melancholic notes of a Bontempi toy organ that Uggeri has owned since his early youth. This one-track-long CD, his first attempt at creating this type of musical journey, is now available on Fluid Audio.

The result is a deep and touching dive into blurred memories. The crackling hiss of Vincenzo Nava's guitar melts into the 'interview' speeches of the Grandfather to the child, accompanied by the minimal echoed organ melodies by Matteo himself. The latter element is a very rare attempt at creating music other than through his loved, and hated, computer. Empowered by the usual careful mastering of James Plotkin, the composition flows slow and crumbling for more than thirty melancholic minutes.

The choice for artwork is drawn from an ancient cook book that belonged to Matteo's maternal grandmother, Carla, representing drawings of bizarre recipes dating back to 1877.

Beauty within...

Hand made letter-pressed / printed kraft covers, glass mastered CD, set of eight A6 prints taken from Carlo Zelaschi's 'Cucina Classica' book pressed on luxury 250g gesso card, antique (1880-1945) photograph that has been hand numbered. All of the above rests inside stitched / sealed vintage brown waxed bags with patchouli scent. An in

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