claudio rocchi: suoni di frontiera

Die Schachtel present the first vinyl reissue of Claudio Rocchi's Suoni di Frontiera, originally released in 1976. A foundational album of electronic music, available again on vinyl for the first time since its original release. An unavoidable and formative element of Italy's long history of avant-garde music is its resistance to category and definition. Even in the face of this, Claudio Rocchi's stunning Suoni di Frontiera is an anomaly -- a body of introspective synthesizer works, stretching out to the world beyond. Italian experimental and avant-garde music from this period is distinctly different from other contexts in Europe and America, in part because many artists would begin within the realms of popular music, and slowly pushed towards more ambitious creative territories as time wore on. Rocchi is no exception. He entered the public eye during the late 1960s and early '70s, working within the idioms of psychedelic rock, folk, and prog. While some of Suoni di Frontiera's elements are present in earlier and later works, nothing reaches the crystalline totality of its being. It is the lone, pure avant-garde gesture in Rocchi's long and noted career. Infused with oscillating loops, astral synth excursions, and sharp collages of vocal snippets and electronics, the music of Suoni di Frontiera might remind some of early Cluster and Harmonia. But Suoni di Frontiera's ambition and breadth is overwhelming. It achieves what few have: realizing the dream set forth by the pioneers of early electronic music and creating a new democratic architecture of sound, as creatively ambitious as it is accessible. It is a gesture of the avant-garde, which could have only emerged from the realms of pop -- sixteen discrete works of acoustics instrumentation, electronics, processing, and synthesis, freestanding and intertwined as a towering whole. It's a restless constellation, delving from one possibly to the next -- pulsing, rhythmic tones, sheets of pure abstraction, fragments of voice and environmental sound, captured and spun wild by tape loops, beautiful ambiences, and space age sounds. Its reemergence holds the potential to reform many perceptions surrounding electronic music as a whole. Oren Ambarchi, from the liner notes: "Another crucial piece of the '70s Italian puzzle has been unearthed for our pleasure. Dig in." Newly remastered and pressed on heavyweight vinyl; Silver and gloss varnish print with printed inner sleeves housing a transparent anti-static record sleeve; Includes insert with notes in Italian and English; Edition of 500.