17 Gen De Revolutionibus
OM Records San Francisco 2022
Enzo Minarelli
Sound homage to Copernicus
| THE SOLAR SYSTEM WAXING POETIC AVAILABLE TODAY ON OTHER MINDS RECORDS! |
| “Minarelli’s lifetime devotion to verbal gymnopedie comes fully ripe in this exciting LP. My turntable was doing somersaults. Complimenti, Maestro!“—Charles Amirkhanian |
| We are excited to announce Other Minds Records’ bid into the world of vinyl records with de revolutionibus: sound homage to Copernicus, a new release from legendary text-sound poet Enzo Minarelli. This limited edition release features a full color 11″x22″ insert with notes on each of the works by the composer. Minarelli compares the revolution of sound poetry to the revolution that Copernicus brought about with his discovery of the heliocentric nature of the solar system. Just like Copernicus put the sun at the center of the solar system, sound poets centered the human voice—and thus the sensuous nature of a text—over traditional systems of syntax. Throughout de revolutionibus, the literal definitions of the words are stripped through repetition and minimalist processes, and layers of varying fidelity of the vocal recording obscure any intelligibility even further. Minarelli deftly combines his voice with found sound, synthesizer, and drum machine accompaniment, vacillating between something like noise assemblage and mutant hip hop. With provocative titles like “Viriditas for Hildegard von Bingen,” “Wandering Planet,” and “Moon Menstruation 29,” Minarelli delivers a wide ranging vocal and electronic techniques that transport the listener to a truly cosmic space. De revolutionibus is at once a continuation and expansion of the vast corpus that the artist has built over his decades-long career. Elements of glitch music, pulsing drums, and grooving low frequencies are paired with more traditional elements of phonetic poetry creating an extraterrestrial hybrid, part avant-pop and part maximalist Dada treatise. |
“Ecco qua! The most thrilling sound poetry release from Italy since the Marinetti serenaded Mussolini”
C. Amirkhanian, American sound poet
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SIDE ONE
1 Sun light [Lux Solaris] 1’58”
2 Earth motion [Motus Terrae] 2’18”
3 Viriditas for Hildegard von Bingen 2’10”
4 Tree word [Parola d’Albero] 4’12” dedicated to D.C.
5 Almagesto –Tolomeo 3’26”
6 Spherical earth [Sferica Terra] 3’
7 Gravity [Gravità] 2’35
SIDE TWO
1 Wandering planet [Errante pianeta] 3’45”
2 Ether existence [Etere Essere] 2’
3 Moon menstruation 29 [Mestruo lunare 29] 4’
4 Ecliptic [Eclìttica] 3’13”
5 The word Star [La Parola Stella] 1’16”
6 Spirit motor for Kepler [Anima Motrix] 4’03”
7 CoperNicola 1’38”
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Charles Amirkhanian – Executive Producer
Andrew Weathers – Producer and Mastering Engineer
Enzo Minarelli – Liner Notes
Mark Abramson – Packaging Design
Liam Herb – Text Editing
Images by Enzo Minarelli
Other Minds Records OM 3001
www.otherminds.org
(c) & (p) 2021 Other Minds Records
| CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE ON THE OTHER MINDS BANDCAMP |
The voice-centric sound poetry of Enzo Minarelli occupies the same territory as John M. Bennett’s work above, and Minarelli is certainly as energetic and enthusiastic as Bennett. But on de revolutionibus, the veteran artist’s bubbling, ever-active audio art has a very particular weight. Minarelli’s gravelly emissions and the growling sound beds he creates with them feel like he’s digging around in sonic dirt, intent on finding poetic gold no matter how far down it’s buried. As he strings together his blurts, coughs, and exhalations, the fact that this album is a tribute to Copernicus starts to make sense—it’s as if Minarelli is probing the physical laws of words and sound to see how the two remain elusively connected.
Marc Masters, January 28, 2022 – BANDCAMP
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“I really enjoy your new album that is a homage to Copernicus. A very nice use of electronics with vocal sounds which is quite balanced and pleasant to listen to. Your philosophical themes based around the Copernicus and the fundamental revolution he brought about (which still remains with us to this day) in Western Civilization continues to be a very rich area to explore. Lots of significant ideas here with your pieces mixing the structure of your poetry with the structures of these initial philosophies”.
Larry Wendt, April 29, 2022 – San José, California.
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“L’albero parla
E tu URLI!”
Enzo Minarelli è prima di tutto un poeta. Anzi, un polipoeta. Da quarant’anni questo instancabile sperimentatore culturale esplora le potenzialità della parola al crocevia intermediale di musica, video ed esibizione dal vivo; le sue tracce discografiche in questo lasso di tempo sono sparse e parziali, in linea con una creatività irrequieta e difficilmente incasellabile, anche se negli ultimi dieci anni la sua attività ha iniziato ad essere documentata con una certa regolarità. De Revolutionibus è l’ultima di queste testimonianze, un omaggio a Copernico in cui la voce è il Sole al centro dell’impianto sonoro. Con un ulteriore parallelismo, si può dire che come le ricerche dello scienziato polacco avevano scardinato sistematizzazioni vetuste e imprecise, così l’uso della parola di Minarelli cerca di superare le convenzionali attribuzioni del significato facendo nascere nuove intuizioni alla soglia tra fonemi e pensiero. Quasi tutti i brani sono imperniati su singole parole o espressioni che vengono ripetute e nel processo trasfigurate sia nella pronuncia che nella corporeità sonora, stratificandosi fino a creare intere atmosfere dove uno schiocco o un ringhio della voce acquisiscono valenze espressive inedite. La tecnica ricorda gli esperimenti con la voce del semidimenticato Adriano Spatola, di cui è consigliata la raccolta Ionisation and Other Sound Poems; ma a differenza sua, Minarelli non si accontenta di imbastire esperimenti vocali bensì costruisce veri e propri pezzi musicali. L’impianto elettronico è minimale ma sorprendentemente moderno: si tratta soprattutto di inserzioni glitch e panorami tra IDM e ambient sghemba, ma anche schegge brucianti in cui pare di sentire echi di techno motorik e hip-hop sfilacciato. Stimoli che si allacciano alle molte forme mutanti che la voce di Minarelli assume per creare pezzi densi, coinvolgenti e mai statici, nonostante i pochi elementi di partenza. Un disco efficacemente polipoetico.
Febbraio 2022 RYM Nightscar
