Browse by Artist: RATTI, NICOLA

Artist:	RATTI, NICOLA
Title:	From the Desert Came Saltwater
Label:	ANTICIPATE
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	ANTICIP 005CD

Italian-born multi-instrumentalist and architect, Nicola Ratti, presents his debut for Anticipate. Nicola's music can best be described as warm, subtractive rock, whereby he reduces guitar figures and piano passages into quiet explorations of the hidden corners of an otherwise familiar sound. Guitars twang with slight and spacious percussion and softly hushed (occasional) vocals and atmospheric twinkles congeal into a carefully-composed re-imagining of music. In terms of situating this album in the context of modern electroacoustic music, Nicola uses more natural effects treatments, shying away from fragmentation and processing, which obscures the inherent character of the instruments. Rather, he uses these processes to add depth and subtly tease out the hidden sonorities of his tools of choice, re-composing them and adding atmospherics along the way. By taking advantage of electronic production approaches, Nicola reworks something which is imminently accessible into an album which adds new levels of intangibility -- turning a classic and subdued sound into a future-minded extension, using the acoustics of field recordings and found sounds as instruments in their own right and allowing the harmonies between object and instrument to become more fully-realized. Dynamic and well-balanced, the album maneuvers through full, layered sequences into spare moments of near silence and back again with ease. It isn't a loud-quiet dichotomy, but rather, skillfully placed areas of intimacy. Nicola segues from droning strings and almost invisible vocals to subtly uplifting chords in an almost unnoticeable transition. From the Desert Came Saltwater is an album that sneaks up on the listener -- disappearing and also taking hold without missing a breath. With one solo album on Megaplomb, a handful of single tracks and remixes, and a recent collaboration with producer and engineer Giuseppe Ielasi, Nicola is defined by the excellence of his craft.

Artist:	RATTI, NICOLA
Title:	220 Tones
Label:	DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ZEIT 012CD

The Die Schachtel label presents a work that points out a crucial turning point in the artistic life of the well-known Italian guitarist and composer Nicola Ratti. In 220 Tones, Nicola Ratti chooses to play instruments that cannot live without electric tension, such as the synthesizer, Farfisa organ, record player, electric guitar, reel-to-reel recorder and CRT television. The relationship between the material instruments and the non-material electrical flow brightens the instruments themselves and creates a deep energy as well as an intense atmosphere that streams through the whole piece. The perfect balance between all these features is proficiently combined with the mastery of the musician as well as the imagination of the composer, making the listener feel the charm and seduction of live performance much more than the usual recording dimension.

Artist:	RATTI, NICOLA
Title:	Ode
Label:	PRESERVATION (AUSTRALIA)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	PRE 023CD

The Preservation label presents Ode, the third album from Italy's Nicola Ratti. The former guitarist of self-described "math-jazz-rock trio" Pin Pin Sugar, Nicola first started recording solo works around the same time of their demise. He has also collaborated with Andrea Belfi and producer and engineer Giuseppe Ielasi in the duo Bellows. His is a deceptively languid, disarming sound of small and gentle gestures and loping rhythms, often repeated and subtly shifting in an impressionistic vision founded on traditional elements. Merging guitar, piano and double bass with percussion, environmental sounds and occasional voice, Nicola constructs songs that by turns float, swell and envelop in magnetic fashion. A piercing tenderness remains at the core of his work, though on Ode there is a more expansive palette at play for something that approaches a pure sense of grace in the sense of space and suspended atmosphere created. It's an ingratiating, personal language Nicola has been quietly developing, reaching the point with Ode where it's blossomed into something truly special.

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