Binding a deep social and political conscious with rigorous musical experimentation, the Brussels based, Italian pianist, performer, composer, Giovanni Di Domenico, delivers Downtown Ethnic Music, the 4th instalment of Die Schachtel's Decay Music series, focused on inspired contemporary experimental efforts in the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract music.
Downtown Ethnic Music encounters Di Domenico reimagining the future of urban music, pluming the mysterious and emotive depths of self, to arrive at vision of sonorous utopia, radically divergent from those of the past. Hybridizing numerous forms of musical practice, while making a conceptual nod to Jon Hassell's notion of the "fourth world", as well as the cross-temporal transnationalism of Roberto Musci, Aktuala, Futuro Antico, and the Third Ear Band, Di Domenico's vision of democracy—rendered through the creative metaphors of sound—is a true to life, bristling conflict, as open-ended as it is ordered, and as dramatic and tense as it is beautiful, playful, and refined.
A colorful tapestry of ideas, experiences, histories, and reference points, woven from a pallet of electronics, synthesis, and various acoustic sources—the intervening rhythms of drummer João Lobo, vocals by Pak Yan Lau and Patshiva CIE women choir, the horns of Ananta Roosens and Jordi Grognard etc.—across the length of Downtown Ethnic Music, the boundaries between idiom, expressive concept, collective, and individual blur, giving way to a visionary, forward-thinking rendering of electroacoustic music, that subtly reminds us of the social and political potential of art.
Seamlessly incorporating bubbling electronic abstraction, sprawling ambience and long tones, throbbing kosmische, acoustic free improvisation, and the human voice, Giovanni Di Domenico's Downtown Ethnic Music represents a high-water mark in an already astounding career.
Pianist, performer and composer Giovanni Di Domenico (born 1977 in Rome, lives and works in Brussels) has carved a deep path through a diverse number of discrete fields within
experimental music, working in various ensembles—Abschattungen, AufHeben, Bonjintan, Cement Shoes, Delivery Health, Going, etc.—as well as producing a discography of critically heralded solo efforts, and intimate collaborations with
Jim O'Rourke, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Akira Sakata, Arve Henriksen, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto,
Alexandra Grimal, Nate Wooley, Chris Corsano, and others.
Di Domenico has founded his own label, Silent Water, home of an eclectic and occasionally unclassifiable production.
