INSONAR

"L'Enfant et le M'nure" is a concept album about "childhood and the power of imagination". The album features both original tracks and cover versions of tracks by David Bowie/Brian Eno, The Velvet Underground, Tim Buckley and revisited Arias by Martini, Gounod and Giordano. "L'Enfant et le M'nure" features a 48 pages booklet with paintings by Marcello Bellina aka Berlikete (MorkObOt) and mosaics by Arend Wanderlust. So it's safe to say it's an ambitious and quite impressive package.

The music on the album is a combination of many musical styles with singer Claudio Milano in focus. His delivery is dramatic, experimental, and virtuosic. His vocal style is paatos filled/theatrical and he spans 7 octaves. Marco Tuppo is an electronic music artist. While the term avant garde is probably the most appropriate to describe the music on "L'Enfant et le M'nure", the tracks are for the most part relatively accessible (I say relatively, because some people will probably find this a great challenge to listen to both sonically and structurally) and a few are even instantly memorable with nice melodic themes (an example of that could be the prog folky parts of "L'Estasi di Santo Nessuno"). There's a strong ambient element on the album too (take a listen to the 12:53 minutes long "Dieci Bambini Cacao") and the music is generally very atmosperic although the dramatic theatrical element is omnipresent. The presence of Marco Tuppo is heard in the way ambient electronic elements are used throughout the album. There are also nods towards opera, classical and jazz in the music. The lyrics are mostly in the Italian language but the cover tracks are sung in English.

"L'Enfant et le M'nure" is a very well produced album and add to that the excellent musicianship and intriguing songwriting and you have a quality release right there. It's a rather challenging listen though and some of the voice experiments and the repetitive nature of some of the ambient tracks can be a bit hard on the ears if you're not accustomed to experimental ambient music. Some parts of the album have me thinking that those parts are interesting, but not necessarily an enjoyable listen. Fortunately most of the album is an enjoyable listen though and a 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

The original double album was, basically, a project that revolved around electronics and vocals that were used to create electronic music of a dampened and ambient nature, yet experimental in approach and execution. To some extent a production that explored the different dynamics one might create and explore when vocals and electronics meet. "Neve Sporca", obviously, can be described in pretty much the same manner.

Claudio Milano is an expressive vocalist, and his voice does take the center stage in most of these creations. From dark, brooding and ominous through the elegant and harmonic to the high pitched, dissonant and disturbing. He has a pitch perfect control of his voice, a keen sense of dramatics and the ability to instantly shift from one extreme delivery to the other. The manner in which he can use his voice to provide more or less disturbing effects just as easy as delivering beautiful, rich and harmonic vocals is another feature that gives the material he contributes to a distinct edge, mood and atmosphere.

Careful drones, minimalistic, sparse arrangements of a more or less experimental nature and combinations of those is the foundation Milano's voice plays upon, as a supplemental feature, a contrasting feature or as an integral part of a tightly woven arrangement. In some cases featuring all of those. Sometimes in a thrilling, hypnotic manner, on other occasions in a manner a tad too experimental to really hit home with my own personal taste in music. This is a production that merits to be described as art rather than entertainment, and as all quality works of art this one does challenge the listener on some level or other, and while most people with an interest in music of this kind will find material they will enjoy immensely most people will also encounter material that won't engage all that much. Which, I guess, should be regarded as a positive quality of this production: That it will challenge the listener, because the music hasn't been made to please a certain audience but rather as a work of art where the artists involved wants to explore a certain mood, atmosphere or approach without trying to make it fit one or more specified audiences.

If you ever come across this production there are many fine moments to be enjoyed. Personally I found both of the instrumental tracks to be among the highlights, compositions that showcase the skills of instrumentalist Marco Tuppa in terms of crafting enthralling soundscapes, highly enjoyable constructions in their own right. But the most interesting occasions are when the vocals of Milano and the music of Tuppa and the various additional contributors manage to come together in what sounds like perfect combinations according to my tastes, when the vocals and instruments together crafts unique soundscapes where they feed of the dynamics of each other. Those moments are magical and goosebumps-inducing.

As per standard procedure when it comes to just about everything I've heard that feature the talents of Claudio Milano, this is an album that comes with a recommendation to those who still regard music as an art, and in this case with a specific mention to those who enjoy sparse and minimalistic composition that explore some the differences, similarities and capabilities of the human voice and electronic instruments combined. In an experimental manner, without going to the extremes very often, more often than not fairly accessible in fact.