Aqua Dorsa – Cloudlands

Aqua Dorsa "Cloudlands" CD

When discovering this amazing co-work album more than one year ago (released in May 2009), I was already familiar with Oophoi's long body of work, but the name of Enrico Coniglio was brand new to me. Fortunately, this changed quickly during the following months. Back to this rewarding collaboration, "Cloudlands" left me immediately breathless not only with the sonics, but also with the visuals, which is quite common for Glacial Movements' cover photo wizard Bjarne Riesto. Breathing and circling ambience is attractively spiced by assorted glitches, clicks and buzzes and sporadic rhythms, a perfect blend of unique sonic artistry by Gianluigi Gasparetti and Enrico Coniglio. "A Pillow Of Clouds" unfolds the album with mysteriously cold ambience colored with various glitches and closer to end also by some dubbed rhythm, a very fresh introduction of this project! The next composition, "Daylight Fading Into Evening Silence", is certainly one of the highlighting moments on the album. Again crispy and rotating glitches and sharp sonic outbursts are dominating the deeper circling drones. Minimally and mechanically sounding, but highly effective and submerging!!! This stunning journey continues also on "The Pond Reflected Her Smile", this time spiced by few voices, less drifting and more sparse. 11-minute long Icy "Zero Gravity" moves into more experimental territory with slowly evolving texture, again minimal with some obscurity gently thrown in. Deeper drones enter the track for the closing 4 minutes. This is absolutely ecstatic and adventurous bathyscaphe journey and a pure subterranean bliss!!! Deeply mysterious drifts open "Syhan", later traversing into ever-changing and evolving mid-paced texture supported by diverse sharp noises, hisses, otherworldly sounds and distant voices, ending in sparse mode. "Alone In The Rising Fog" starts with minimal drones and experiments and creates ghostly atmospheres, at times it gets more massive, but then again striding back into almost silent level. "Night Of Trembling Stars" returns into lively terrain with remote voice samples and elliptic peaceful washes, with hypnotic arrangements making from this composition a truly remarkable closer! Extremely refreshing "Cloudlands" is strongly recommended collaborative effort of two highly praised Italian virtuosos and also one of my most favourite Glacial Movements CDs!!! Magnifico!!!

Richard Gürtler (Aug 28, 2011, Bratislava, Slovakia)