Exposition Of Cloves (LP)

Intense, electro-acoustic/concrète shadowplay by two masters of their craft, Matteo Castro & Riccardo Mazza aka Lettera 22; riddled with devilish detail certain to grip disciples of Italian horror scores, Valerio Tricoli, Jérôme Noetinger, Lionel Marchetti.

A phantasmagoric episode of intrigue and stuff from the foothills of the Italian Alps, ‘Exposition of Cloves’ portrays Lettera 22 at the peak of their powers. In quick, quick, slow, quick movements, the duo harness a typical array of tape-spliced concrète sampledelia, analog instrumentation, and deft electro-acoustic process, to create spidery webs of texture sound and a sense of space that leads one to constantly look over their shoulder.

The duo’s Nashazphone debut is a significant marker in a catalogue stretching over a decade, executed with a fleeting, dreamlike illusiveness that speaks to their increased familiarity with each other’s creative nature and techniques.

Hailing from a picturesque and historic region of north east Italy, riddled by ravines and sleepy villages, where the Alps slope to the Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea; Lettera 22’s work has long reflected their locale with a timeless yet contemporary sense of psychodrama where the horrors of the mid C.20th linger as palpably as last night’s spider webs in the street. ‘Exposition of Cloves’ yields the most hauntingly sensorial immersion in their stylized arcana, making up for a notable lack of work since 2016 with newfound relish for their form.

In five fleeting parts they render an uncannily tangible reading of their landscape and inner worlds that feels like flashbacks thru half a millennia of world explorers bringing home exotic spices and their unprecedented sensations, thru to difficult periods of contemporary politics, and the embrace of new artforms such as concrète and electro-acoustic musick, that express the palimpsest of myth, folklore, horror stories embedded in the streets, the hills and themselves.