Avant-Garde Progster Daniele Del Monaco releases THE ZONE, a great conceptual album!
The Zone is a double album written by Italian composer Daniele Del Monaco for a band of performers from New York City who are usually affiliated with avant-jazz and free improvisation.
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This concept album is inspired by Persian poet and Sufi mystic Farid al-Din ‘Attarand his epic 12th century poem “The Conference of the Birds”. Its title references the “Zone” in Russian Filmmaker’s Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1970s “Stalker” and also “Roadside Picnic” by the Soviet Russian science fiction authors the Strugatsky Brothers.
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Del Monaco creates his own original story by making poets and philosophers interact with each other. Stimulated by Attar’s plot and his symbolic peregrination through seven valleys (“the stages of human cravings…”), he combines the allegories of Lord Byron, Yeats and Keats, the parables of Buddah, the thought of Thoureau and Diogenes and the poetic imagery of Ludovico Ariosto.
He sends the listener onto a journey in search of truth.
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The result is a set of seven songs filled with allusive and symbolic imagery, exploring the relationship between beauty and possession.
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“Daniele Del Monaco, joined by a stellar cast of musicians, has here manifest this long-form composition, The Zone, functioning on many levels: as a lyrical work of philosophy, an expression of longing, a compendium of provocative definitions. Its all wrapped up in a music of great currency: electronic, jazzy, noisy, rocking – a thrill in every direction.”
Elliott Sharp
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The recording features Fay Victor’s urban jazz vocals, Marco Cappelli’s theatrical guitar, Satoshi Takeishi’s performance on the drums, and the virtuosity of bassist Ken Filiano, all guided by Del Monaco’s experimental sensibility on keys and sound generators. Del Monaco’s radical approach to creating music is rooted in a slow process of working through a score, balancing meticulous compositions whilst setting parameters and leaving space for improvisation.
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“Years ago I wrote an ensemble piece called ‘Edible Weeds’. Your wonderful weeds became an Orto Botanico- a botanical garden. Did I hear that “I heard the old man say wail” or was it “whale”? …during this amazing space walk, where I stepped out of my capsule right into the music without any change of tempo.”
Alvin Curran
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The majority of the album was recorded between 2018 and 2019 by Alessandro Benedetti in Rome. Benedetti tragically passed away before the sessions were finished, at which point Martin Bisi in Brooklyn, NY took over the recording work. The album’s journey then continued on to Sheffield UK, where it was completed and mixed by producer Thomas Lebioda. It will subsequently be released via Studio III Recordings on 22nd October 2021.
Throughout its development, a number of guest musicians have accompanied Del Monaco for live performances of The Zone: Blixa Bargeld, Theodosii Spassov and Marco Ariano joined the quintet in October 2014 for a first performance at Centro Campania in Caserta, IT. In November 2018, Marc Ribot joined the band for a rendition at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, IT, organised and produced by RomaEuropa festival.
STUDIO III RECORDINGS is a recording studio and record label with an emphasis on analogue music production and high-quality record making. Our office and studio are located in Sheffield UK.
Established in 2020 as a division of Labelship Records, we’ve set out to maintain a production culture in which the recording, mixing, mastering and lacquer cutting procedures are kept entirely within the analogue domain.
We focus on intricate, limited-edition record pressings and distribute them worldwide through selected record shops, via Bandcamp and our regional distribution partners.
Information: www.studiothreerecordings.com
