Audio For Lovers is a profoundly emotive double album. It sings with a pristine clarity, the musical medium transmitting feeling and atmosphere with a distilled purity. This is music straight from the heart, and indeed at times the album transcends all artistic form and becomes like a direct and untranslated expressive transmission. The first disc presents a slew of tracks, each a vignette of a particular mode of love in its polymorphic pathos. Curiously, every track is 1:40, 6:24 or 8:00 long, and the symmetries this produces are marvellous, ranging from short auditory haikus to more verdant and luxurious sound paintings. The music is dominated by slowly-unfolding synths, pads, organs, drones and the like; Orsi deploys deep banks and drifts of sound. Curiously, the effect is not so much to evoke atmosphere or a sense of horizon as such arrangements often do; rathe
r the music plugs straight into the brain so that an emotional kinaesthesia is induced. Interwoven with the keys are some of the most subtle and delicately played pianos, guitars and basses I think I have every heard. Orsi relies heavily on repetition to draw the moment into maximal fullness and his subtle compositions draw us into different moods and atmospheres with grace. The theme might be love, but Orsi conveys great depth and, stained with the salt of suffering, the music never teeters into sentimentality or schmaltz. He weaves complex affective tapestries, knitting together different feelings with attentive and gentle brilliance. There is a profound joy running through this disc, but it is tempered by shadow and the result is unalloyed emotional apotheosis. Disc two presents only four tracks, though their combined duration is still about an hour. This disc is more heavily synth driven and ambient; while disc one generally maintains slow tempos and minimal structures, disc two really opens out and is perhaps a little less disciplined in this respect. The track titles are perfect illustrations of the experiences of the songs; “2 or 3 Moments in 1 Day”, for example, truly instils one’s spirit with the pensive existential weather of being human and alive. That said I did prefer disc one; I feel that thematically it is a little more coherent and compositionally the additional discipline enables it to pack more into less. Honestly, though, if this album only comprised disc two I would still really like, even if the deeper magic is on disc one.
r the music plugs straight into the brain so that an emotional kinaesthesia is induced. Interwoven with the keys are some of the most subtle and delicately played pianos, guitars and basses I think I have every heard. Orsi relies heavily on repetition to draw the moment into maximal fullness and his subtle compositions draw us into different moods and atmospheres with grace. The theme might be love, but Orsi conveys great depth and, stained with the salt of suffering, the music never teeters into sentimentality or schmaltz. He weaves complex affective tapestries, knitting together different feelings with attentive and gentle brilliance. There is a profound joy running through this disc, but it is tempered by shadow and the result is unalloyed emotional apotheosis. Disc two presents only four tracks, though their combined duration is still about an hour. This disc is more heavily synth driven and ambient; while disc one generally maintains slow tempos and minimal structures, disc two really opens out and is perhaps a little less disciplined in this respect. The track titles are perfect illustrations of the experiences of the songs; “2 or 3 Moments in 1 Day”, for example, truly instils one’s spirit with the pensive existential weather of being human and alive. That said I did prefer disc one; I feel that thematically it is a little more coherent and compositionally the additional discipline enables it to pack more into less. Honestly, though, if this album only comprised disc two I would still really like, even if the deeper magic is on disc one.Fabio Orsi - Audio For Lovers
Label: Last Visible Dog
Catalog#: LVD128-129
Country: US
Released: Sep 2008
Genre: Electronic, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Abstract, Drone, Experimental, Minimal, Ambient
Disc One
01 Yesterday Love
02 Rising Love
03 Secret Love
04 Pure Love
05 Lost Love
06 Young Love
07 Tender Love
08 Last Love
09 Shining Love
10 Tomorrow Love
Disc Two
01 2or 3 Moments in 1 Day
02 The Psychedelic Power Of Bubbles (You And Me)
03 Before Long, Before Anyone, The Stars Will Be Walls In My Mind
04 Last Dream Lost Carefully
