Italian pianist Giovanni di Domenico may be known to some audiences as a jazz / improviser, one who has found inspiration in the music of Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley as much as that of Luciano Berio or Debussy. But he’s also a composer, and I think that’s the side of his personality we hear today on Polvere di Rabbia (KOHLHAAS KHS021). I should stress it is only one side, as apparently he’s been quite prolific in experimenting in many fields and genres, including his own take on the minimal electronic thing.
Meanwhile, his Polvere di Rabbia is simply impossible to categorise neatly. For one thing, it’s his first exploit into the world of using spoken words and texts as the basis for each piece, said texts drawn from his own personal diaries, and which when spoken out loud may amount to an interesting stream of consciousness ramble through his anterior lobes. It’s done to the accompaniment of strange electronic music, produced with keyboards, organs, electric pianos and synths played by our maestro, sometimes joined by percussive backdrops from Joao Lobo and Mathieu Calleja, plus additional synth playing from Pak Yan Lau. The combined effect makes me think I’m dreaming, passing on an odd sensation of unreality. He may not have been keeping dream- diaries, but his insistent and oddly detached tone contributes to this weightless sensation. This might be the time to mention it’s spoken in Italian, so the actual meaning of his words is lost on this English speaker, but the artistic tone of delivery is unmistakeable, as intimate and convincing as that lengthy Jean-Luc Godard monologue in the movie Deux Ou Trois Choses.
I also found it interesting when he switched things up on side two with ‘Le Bestie Feroci’, where there’s a jumble of spoken gibberish, multiple layered voices and not a single intelligible word, uttering mysteriously over a gorgeous simple organ riff that Florian Fricke would have descended from his private mountain loft to hear. Meanwhile on ‘Un Uovo’ he achieves the remarkable feat of combining two voices (his own and Lucia Palladino’s) in an art-movie styled dialogue over a weird musical fugue that’s like dessicated free jazz filtered through the dimensions of tone row composition and serialism. Even the dialogue is alienating at some level, breathless and intimate like two lovers, yet also toneless and aloof. For me the standout piece is still ‘Un Unico Volto’, 13 minutes of dense cosmic confusion, where the steady intoning of the voice is in quite stark contrast to the near-formless synth washes and clattering percussive effects. There must be an underlying structure here, but he’s disguised it well.
The title of this unusual album translates into English as “Dust Of Rage”, which is slightly puzzling as one doesn’t sense the emotion of anger here, so much as that of a resigned, world-weary philosophy that accepts the buffets of life with a fatalistic shrug. Very good. From 3rd March 2022.