Matteo Cambò – Evolutionary Silence [L’Archipel Nocturne]

L’Archipel Nocturne is a small Italian label focused on contemporary and experimental music. It releases albums in digital format and limited edition box sets, and next March it launches its first reference by Matteo Cambò, composer, pianist and multi-instrumentalist who combines his personal research with his activity as a commissioned producer for different genres.

Paradoxum is an exploratory journey into the imaginative world by Matteo Cambò. A world where the different experiences linked to musical research and life converge in a coherent narrative and sound experience. Cambò is an author who draws on the actions of his experience, adopting different compositional techniques and contaminating his creative process with figurative art, theatre, interdisciplinary exchange with artists with whom he collaborates.

The heterogeneity of the paths traversed is then traced back to an evident formal and stylistic coherence, a compositional practice linked to the repetition of gestures, to the recurrence of a mantric structure, defined by the artist, where the parts follow well-defined phases that interlink: stasis-enunciation of materials / evolution-chaos / resolution-epilogue-return to stasis.

The electronic layers are always in dialogue with the acoustic sound, the textures arise and surprise, creating always astonishing contrapuntal dialectical relationships, outlining sound spaces with a strong evocative and narrative power.
Paradoxum not only outlines Cambò’s musical journey, but presents itself as an invitation to explore the fusion between human experiences, sonic experimentation and enchantment.

Fluxid is a piece written during the years of studies at the Conservatory. It was born from a study on a Max/Msp algorithm onto which the sampled sounds of the flautist Donato Salvatore Cambò, father of the composer, are grafted.

The title Fluxid recalls the double assonance between the words «flux» and «flute». Starting from this hidden ambivalence, the author recreates sound environments that can recall a research in some onomatopoeic way.

Totem & Time was born thanks to a collaboration with the physicist Giorgio Contestabile, maker of modular synthesizers. Cambò experimented with self-built analogue machines, finding connections between different possibilities of timbral successions. The piece is organized according to a structure dear to the author, an initial phase of quiet, punctuated by a percussive acoustic sound of the handpan drum, then evolving into a complex and unpredictable internal development, until the final nirvana is reached.

A shamanic vision of a journey, where the metaphysical coordinates of space and time are traced back to the physical experience of man.

Evolutionary Silence, a song born from the collaboration with the visual artist Elsa Mencagli. The piece was composed for a site-specific installation created in the countryside of Tuscania, called «La Pietrara», then in Acquapendente and Chia (VT). The connection to the rurality of the places is given by the recording and manipulation of a simple mouth harp, onto which a voice is grafted recalling onomatopoeic sounds in dialogue with increasingly dense and obscure electronics. A piano melody is the guide that leads the listener through the various states of the piece, up to the coda and the final denouement.

Where Study Rejoices was composed during the interdisciplinary artistic residency «Ascolti di terra» (2023). Cambò in this case makes use of field recording, recording sounds of nature and sampling some voices lent by the artists in residence. The piece is structured in four parts and is punctuated by the sampling of voices that punctuate its progress. The repetition of the vocal fragments chases the cycles of nature and the production of the earth, experiences lived by the author during the artistic residency.

Everything Awaits is a song inspired by the first canto of the «Divine Comedy» and created starting from an experimentation on an improvisation with whistles (Irish flute), tambourine, guitar and voice, then reworked with Max/Msp. Cambò weaves an evocative sound environment generating a tension linked to waiting and the slow change of emotions, until the arrival of a melody which slowly pacifies and leads to a final relaxation revealing the rediscovery of the self.

Lully, a piece written for a theater show, was born from the collaboration with the actress Gaia Mencagli. The song, with a strong evocative power, recalls the story of a mother who sings a lullaby to her baby to make her feel safe in her arms during the bombings of the Second World War. The diaphanous melody of the song meets the sampled and synthetic sounds of the ongoing bombing, weaving a dystopian hypnotic dualism.

Release date: March 1st, 2024.