ABATE, MAURIZIO - Standing Waters

With Standing Waters Maurizio Abate recovers the discourse started with Loneliness Desire And Revenge (BS 027LP, 2016) but with a different narrative sensitivity. The symbolic air that you breathe suggests a personal and universal experience in which thoughts and perceptions remain as enveloped in an eternal cosmic wheel. Its a condition that flows sincerely into an emphatic introspection and identification between the stasis of an inner soul and the flowing vitality of stagnant aquatic landscapes. In this direction the music of Abate always condenses multiple ranges of different emotional spectra evoked by profound naturalistic references. The airy openings of the strings, the distant whispers of the harmonica, cascades of phrasings calmer or more torrential can lead into the magnificent climax of nostalgia. The string arrangement for violin and cello by Lucia Gasti introduces in a dimension of idyll, in elegiac passages of touching poetry almost of chamber music but at the same time wet by the pastoral and bucolic moods of autumn landscapes; they are paintings imbued with different flavors and colors that recall the light and the candor of the Venetian tones or the moving paintings full of meaning. In the darkest and saddest moments, the open chords are like suspensions of unresolved questions and torments, but the cathartic finale with a free and minimalist piano prelude to possible future glares, almost alludes to the idea that even where theres stasis the sun can still shine the hope for the new on the clearing of the pond. There remains the feeling with that stylistic freedom of expression", dear to the visionaries Fahey and Basho, but there is also a clear interpretation of the expressive possibility of the lead guitar, absolutely lyrical and contemporary for refinement of the crystalline sound, which places this work in parallel with the basic acoustic tests of others great like Jim ORourke, Jack Rose, or James Blackshaw." - Black Sweat.