Marta Salogni and Stefano Pilia’s Phren is music of accretion. Inputs are fed through Pilia’s chain of filters and tape echo and on into Salogni’s Revox reel-to-reel tape machine for further manipulation and modulation, the signals absorbing new layers and mutations as they go. According to the release notes, that initial input is often Pilia’s guitar, but the pair’s plastic approach to sound makes that far from obvious. They telescope the act of mediation, mottling, shading and bending signals as they pass from sound source to ears.
‘Sopra l’acque scavate’ opens with distorted notes sparking like a frosty firework display. The more your ears focus, the more ambiguous those notes become. The attack and decay seem awry for a guitar, the timbre too guitar-y…

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