For Alessandro Cortini, time possesses an almost mystic capacity for vitalising the sounds he captures in the studio. “When I press record it’s like I’m recording an emotional musical statement,” he intimates, “and it could become the album, or it could just stay on my hard drive and bake for another ten years until I feel like it reflects something I can identify with.” It’s this sensitivity to the breadth of sound’s affective qualities that drives the work of Cortini, propelling his solo activity into favour with the most adventurous music fans, and notably securing his place in the line-up of the ground-breaking industrial rock group Nine Inch Nails. First rising to notoriety programming and writing electronics with NIN, he’s since developed a run of solo albums and unmissable collaborations that express a versatility with genre, instrumentation, and recording techniques as surely as they render an adept composer at their most inquisitive.
The making of SCURO CHIARO, much like its predecessor, allowed Cortini to embrace a freedom of expression that had otherwise eluded him. “I really enjoyed the fact that Volume Massimo became a series of rough colours that I added to in order to specify a more definite image, or a more definite painting in a way,” says Cortini. “It’s something that I hadn’t done before as a lot of my recordings are live recordings. With SCURO CHIARO I went back to this process. A lot of the compositions that I included are compositions that I listened to, worked with, massaged, and shaped the corners for them to fit in this specific puzzle—but there was less dissection, less hair and make-up than VOLUME MASSIMO.” The artwork for SCURO CHIARO, shot by Emilie Elizabeth, is an extension of the thematic bridge between the two works.
