Girolamo De Simone (Masseria dei Suoni) — Jan 27, 2016
An incredibly high-level philosophical review tracking the concept of "universo assente" (absent universe) and the philosophical framework of Heidegger's Dasein. "Now Spannung, this monumental project by Romina Daniele, posits itself like an assertive stele—musical and... also theoretical. It is an assertive stele and also a fiery dart..."
RDM Records
1/27/20163 min read
"We are by now unaccustomed to works like Spannung by Romina Daniele. The reason is simple: for a long time now, research has seemed to abdicate in the face of dense proposals, declaring itself defeated. Shores of resistance naturally always survive in the recesses of the known, succeeding often, in institutional absence, to find sporadic lines of consensus. The line of the avant-garde was entirely within that trait between absence and assent. Now Spannung, this monumental project by Romina Daniele, posits itself like an assertive stele—musical and, in the opinion of this writer, also theoretical. It is an assertive stele and also a fiery dart: will it succeed in 'breaking' the Italian omertà [code of silence]?
Spannung is a box set that saw seven years of 'gestation,' and that comprises three discs: one red—the color of the cover and the booklet (and 'red' is also a bit the image transferred by the beautiful photos of the artist)—one blue, and the last black. In the first CD, the voice of Romina Daniele, her compositions, and her electronics. In the second, without subtractive intents for poetics and language, the vocal path continues, but with greater interactions: Luca Caiazza and Emanuele Cutrona (Bass), Luca de Maio (Guitar), giving a more performative vision, close to live, which completes and integrates the spectrum of what Romina Daniele can do, both in a techno-musical sense (already known to us) but above all, here, in a projectual sense. The architecture of Spannung is solid, well-consignored, precisely 'monolithic.'
In the first two CDs there are then some well-known places—let us say 'street indicators,' to use a French-style linguistic idiom: Gershwin, Bessie Smith, Frank Sinatra, some traditionals. Offers of a shore so as not to terrify us: but it is a matter of the art of permuting, of recreating, of doing what one wills with the known, without betraying it, rather innovating it. This means memory, but not necessarily in the sense of appropriation (which is always only individual, and with which uncontainable imagination has little to do). In the third CD, the black one (which is my favorite), the circle closes with two sole compositions, perhaps the longest and which I would consider almost as mini-'operas,' capable of being self-sufficient: 'Dasein III' (nearly 25 minutes), preceded by 'La natura assente' (6:24 dense minutes), which reminds me so much of the string of significance 'Petrarca-Ungaretti-Cilio,' also alluded to by me in a disc entitled Dell'universo assente edited and multiple times reprinted by the Milanese Die Schachtel. According to that string, which leads to Luciano Cilio, 'Laura is an absent universe... The idea of absence is a world distant in space and time, which returns to hear itself alive in the foliage of sentiment, of memory, and of fantasy. It is above all the breaking of the shadows of memory' (G. Ungaretti, Note – Sentimento del Tempo).
I do not know naturally how much in this title there is a correspondence of intentionality of architecture. The greatness of this musician, who is not solely a musician, resides precisely in her capacity to propose a composite action and a vocal gesture so bold, which puts itself at stake, which dares and explores nearly virgin lands, where very few others have set foot (and I think naturally to Demetrio Stratos: I believe that Romina is among the very few living artists capable of using the voice like Demetrio), and contemporaneously to offer a rock-solid aesthetic and philosophical framework. Someone wrote that one cannot prescribe from being. Personally, in an analogous projectual aesthetic, I have preferred to refer to the multiplicity of sense, of subjects, of feeling, leaving open my projectual aesthetic toward the capacity of hetero-referenceof the work, and not in an exhaustive sense for which 'we are the here and the now of the world (Dasein)'. In my opinion, the reflections of Romina Daniele that she gives from this extraordinary force to her music are tense in the search for the authentic, of the starting point and of closure, where the other is found in 'being together cast into the world.' It is another shore, another possibility released to the authentic. For this reason, I like very much to conclude with her words: 'the voice plays everything, at high degrees of exposition, in front of the structures of the constructed. And the voice is that which is man. The being-together enigma that stays close to our heart is also at the limit of exhaustion, ed il limite non è dove una cosa finisce, bensì è dove ogni cosa inizia la sua essenza' [and the limit is not where a thing ends, but rather it is where each thing begins its essence]."
Girolamo De Simone with Masseriadeisuoni.org
