Wild Songs [VINYL]

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Estasy is the musical alias of Rome, Italy-based installation and performance artist Emiliano Maggi. After a few cassettes and CD-Rs, Estasy is releasing its full-length debut, Wild Songs, on Acéphale (SALEM, Elite Gymnastics, How To Dress Well). Wild Songs doesn t sound like anything else, but it contains echoes from disparate sources. The first thing you ll notice is Maggi s voice, which has the range and timbre of an Italian Coloratura singer. Unlike many of today s high-octave singers, this is not a falsetto; it s a soprano. Sometimes it appears stark and alone, sometimes buried underneath ghostly vocal overdubs. Wild Songs has a haunting quality that derives spiritually from Maggi s recording process. All but three tracks on the album were recorded en plein air: amongst nature in fields and woods. The sounds of wind and nature, and Maggi s tape recorder, blend into his spectral soprano to create a mythological world that modern civilization can no longer see, but which through acts of the imagination we might be able to hear. The result is something like Alan Lomax s field recordings trapped in Werner Herzog s Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Reference points include the Nordic folk music traditions currently being kept alive by acts such as Dvergmål, the sublime other-worlds given birth to by Sigur Rós s made up language, and most notably the proto-gothic funereal dirge of Nico s post-Chelsea Girls trilogy.