A Circle of Grey is an electroacoustic composition blending philosophical contemplation on transience, impermanence and musical exploration.
Its unique sonic palette takes on the refractions of a non-colour and an experience poised between tangibility and abstraction. Primarily utilizing synthesizer sounds and manipulations of found sounds through a Revox B77 tape machine, A Circle of Grey defies easy categorization, as Valerio Tricoli seamlessly integrates a variety of techniques and elements into a dry, broken, deserted but eventually haunting sonic landscape. At its core, A Circle of Grey is characterized by a constant tension between sounds shimmering on the surface of the loudspeakers and sounds moving in the depths of the aural field, as if an imagined reality is experienced through the ever-changing reflections of broken glass. An apparently aimless, timeless wandering on sands of silica and quartz, where all is co-present and distant, asserted and negated, where relics of humanity are found and soon lost. Opting for an evocative, non-descriptive plan, the composition calls for interpretative ambiguity: despite these existential themes, there is also a sense of beauty and hopefulness. Tricoli's use of circularity and subtle variations in timbre and dynamic create a sense of depth and progression aimed to transcend linear time, the movements in the composition continuously folding back on themselves and echoing in the listener's mind.
Valerio Tricoli (born 1977 in Palermo, based in Germany) is an Italian composer and performer of electro-acoustic music. Since the mid '00 is main instruments for live presentations is the Revox B77 reel-to-reel tape recorder, used as a completely analogue device for live sampling and real-time transformation, editing and mixing of pre-recorded (field or studio recordings) and made-on-the-spot sound sources. On a formal level his sets focus on the impromptu creation of a narrative which takes into account the multiple relations intervening between reality, virtuality and memory during the acoustic event: sounds are always hovering between the "here and now" of the concert situation and the shady domain of memory—distant but at the same time present like in a deja-vu experience. Privileging fracture over continuity and by the use of a dynamic range that could often jump suddenly from near-silence to extreme blasts of sounds, an almost tactile feeling of brooding tension is often attained. His electro-acoustic studio compositions are aligned to the tradition of Musique Concrète and explore themes of the internal and of the occult, which together with the use of spoken text makes them often deeply existential works. Over the years he has been active in some long-term collaboration with other musicians, composers, choreographers, directors and multimedia artists. He is a founding member of the italian avant-rock group 3/4HadBeenEliminated (with Stefano Pilia and
Claudio Rocchetti) and has been working extensively with
Thomas Ankersmit,
Werner Dafeldecker,
Hanno Leichtmann,
Anthony Pateras (in duo under the name
Astral Colonels), Ecka Mordecai, Antoine Chessex, Fabio Selvafiorita, Bill Kouligas, etc. He has released sound works with PAN,
Shelter Press,
Die Schachtel, Formacentric, Dilemma Records, Bowindo,
Xing.
