Giovanni Cristino, 01. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Memory is something very precious, we are the sum of all that we remember and hold dear, even those moments in which we try our damndest to forget everything, can hold a sparkle of beauty that seems to be an island in a sea of perpetual troubles and yet one we cling to lest the memory fades of when we stood tall, when we stood for something that would hurt us because we saw the other side was wrong. Memory is after all, all we are and all we will be in the eyes of others and memory is amplified by the senses, none perhaps finer than the sense of sound.

It is arguably the sense of sound that Giovanni Cristino exemplifies as being the main cause for celebration in his near half hour epic 01, a single soundscape that is immersed in the feeling of continuous echo and one that has the appeal of a sculpture, hand crafted, sweated over and finally polished by the memory of the Renaissance period.

The sense of hearing a moment throughout a piece of music over and over again, in different subtle forms, one that is not impoverished by time but keeps playing at the emotions felt by each ripple, each note and one that leads the memory down the path of the near-primordial, the prepared collective sound of evolution calling and the moment of finality delayed until the very last moment; the echo chamber completing its task and proving the artist’s point in their art exhibition of “Non smetti diesistre”, It does not cease to exist.

Memory is all that we are in the end, whether as our own symphony full of an orchestra mindful of the legacy left behind or indeed just the ring of the triangle in intermittent parts throughout the mix of everybody else’s memory, in the modern age we all play the part of the sound, the resonance in the atmosphere and in the end the full immersive scenario is to be held up as the dynamic envisaged by Giovanni Cristino as 01 takes the stand.

Ian D. Hall