Four Italian soundscape artists worked in four ailing Italian industrial sites. Their work aimed to capture the strength of industrial noises, providing a “loud experience” of mechanical hums, natural drones, metal squeaks, waves of steam and the sounds of raw materials, simultaneously proposing to reflect over the meaning and the high social value of industries and workers in a country where they are often overlooked.
Their work was distributed to a host of musicians and sound artists that, looking from afar to Italian industry, but perhaps feeling much of the effects of the crisis that is affecting it, reinterpreted the original sources and provided the ten reinterpretations that complete this release.
Alessio Ballerini recorded in a large boatyard located in Ancona. Port: 43.62142 / 13.50952 Ancona (Ancona)
Enrico Coniglio worked at the plant of the Grandi Molini Italiani in Porto Marghera, on Venice’s waterfront. This plant is specialized in producing soft wheat flour and durum wheat semolina. Grandi Molini Italiani: Via dell’Elettricità, 13; 30175 Porto Marghera (Venezia)
Giuseppe Cordaro visited Acciaieria di Rubiera, based at Casalgrande, close to the Secchia river, surrounded by fertile farmland. This furnace, with its 70-ton capacity, has yielded significant improvements in quality and productivity. Acciaierie di Rubiera: Via XXV Aprile; 42013 San Donnino di Casalgrande (Reggio Emilia)
Attilio Novellino recorded the Marcellinara plants of Calme Cementi, an italian factory specialized in the production of cement, lime and calcium carbonate. Calme Cementi: Zona Industriale SS 280 Km 16.7; 88040 Marcellinara (Catanzaro)
This release is born of AIPS — Archivio Italiano Dei Paesaggi Sonori, an initiative by Alessio Ballerini and Francesco Giannico for promoting soundscape culture in Italy and all those musicians and soundscape artists who are involved in the practice of the field recordings and in ambient, noise, drone and folk music.
