Album launches by 2 fascinating artists from the experimental music scene
Lea Bertucci
Lea Bertucci will release a new album in October. The Oracle is a striking, vocally oriented collection of music spanning six tracks full of adventurous sounds, steeped in mysticism and the power of imagination. It is also her first solo work since the acclaimed A Visible Length of Light (Cibachrome Editions, 2021).
Her new music is all about the voice – a shift from the instrumental nature of her previous albums. Bertucci makes inventive use of a reel-to-reel machine to manipulate her voice live – a process that pulls apart language to create meaning that goes beyond words. The lyrics on The Oracle are created by what the artist herself calls a “stream of consciousness” method of improvisation.
Lea Bertucci is an experimental musician whose work revolves around electronic and spatial expansions of instrument and voice. Alongside her long-standing practice with woodwind instruments, she creates compositions that combine electronica and multichannel sound with orchestral and folkloristic instruments. This is how she creates tangible worlds of sound that evoke the eternal and illuminate the every day.
With a sharp ear for location sensitivity and acoustics, her work has extended in recent years to installations and non-linear presentations. Her discography spans more than ten years, with a number of entirely solo works and also collaborations, most recently with Lawrence English, Olivia Block and Ben Vida.
John Also Bennett
John Also Bennett presents Ston Elaióna, his first album for Shelter Press since solo debut Erg Herbe (2019). The American-born Athens-based flutist, synthesist and composer weaves a remarkably unique electro-acoustic journey for bass flute and Yamaha DX7ii, largely recorded in the early hours of his hometown. Ston Elaióna – Greek for ‘in the olive grove’ – is steeped in the atmosphere of the old and the modern world, given form by a playful yet rigorous approach to sound.
Bennett emerged on the noise scene of Columbus (Ohio) in the mid-2000s, and moved to New York around 2010. In the decade that followed, his practice grew steadily: as a solo artist (JAB), as a member of the trio Forma, in the duo CV & JAB with his partner Christina Vantzou, in Jon Gibson’s ensemble and countless other collaborations. Since 2020, he has led a semi-nomadic existence. He commutes between Brooklyn and Brussels, travels around on tour, and has spent a lot of time in Greece – where he settled last year.