Andrea Penso – Ad Invisibilia LP

An effort in ambient minimalism with touchstones of contemporary electroacoustic practice as well as legendary 1970s and ’80s Italian LPs like Giusto Pio’s “Motore Immobile”, Franco Battiato’s “M.lle le Gladiator”, and “Antico Adagio” by Lino Capra Vaccina, “Ad Invisibilia” was composed and recorded in numerous villages across the expanse of Italy – (Rocca Malatina in the Apennine Mountains; Ostuni in the deep south, close to the sea; Traversella, Chiara and Fondo in Val Chiusella, a valley about 1,000 meters above sea level in the north-western Alps – between 2014 and 2020. When departing into the process of its creation, Andrea Penso posed himself a series of conceptual prompts and questions: “Making the invisible visible? Through the contemplation of sound, in sound. Are these sounds spiritual exercises? Are they perhaps prayers? What is essential is invisible to the eye?”

The outcome, slowly evolving over the course of six years, developed into a series of subtle works in shimmering tonality and texture, intertwining acoustic and electronic elements with processing and field recordings, ranging radically in their duration from under two minutes to nearly nineteen. Remarkably beautiful and introspective – appearing as fascinating meditations of place and states of mind – each of Penso’s compositions feels like an effort in understatement: how to gain the most meaning from the sparsest and most constrained means, accomplishing a striking sense of abstraction without fully existing a groundless in imagism drawn from a very real world.

“What one cannot talk about, one can, and indeed must, sing and make music, if one cannot be silenced”

Limited edition of 100 copies, gold etched sleeve, insert printed on 28 gsm paper