December 07, 2011

Did Italian avantgarde composer Luciano Cilio know the Third Ear Band?


I don't know if Luciano Cilio knew Third Ear Band's music at the time when he composed and recorded his only one solo album titled "Discorsi del presente" [Speeches on the present], published in 1977 on vinyl by EMI (3C064 18253) in a limited edition of few copies. 

But if you listen to one of the five album tracks, "Quarto quadro della conoscenza" [Fourth picture of knowledge], I think you can find some right references to the music of Sweeney & C., maybe more about the mood than the sounds.
For me (an Italian underground music writer) it has been an incredible and guiltily recent discovery - his record a great masterpiece of Pure Art that can be placed among other great Italian works of that time - Aktuala's, Claudio Rocchi's "Volo Magico" I & II, Lino Capra Vaccina's "Antico Adagio" , first Battiato albums, Alan Sorrenti's "Aria"...

Born in Naples in 1950, he was a self-taught composer and multi-instrumentalist musician, playing guitar, sitar, piano, bass and mandola. After collaborating with other non conventional artists (as Alan Sorrenti and Shawn Phillips) during '60's and '70's, he committed suicide in 1983 at 33, leaving us an album and few unrealised tracks (all included in a 2004 reissue on a 500 copies limited CD edition titled "Dell'universo assente", now sold out)... establishment ignoring him (but thanks his pupil and friend musician Girolamo De Simone we can now listen to his works).

                                                                     Luciano Cilio - "Interludio" (1977)

Do you think he was a real genius? I think so and I hope you can enjoy his oblique sounds that remind me the Thirds, but also Popol Vuh, some acoustic dark English folker (i.e Nick Drake), the blessed  Linda Perhacs of "Parallelograms", Bill Fay's second album, experimental musicians as John Hassel or Bill Frisell, or avantgarde composers as Mortan Feldman, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi.


Download and listen to Luciano Cilio faboulous album at:

Reviews (in English) at  
http://www.hydramag.com/2010/11/21/luciano-cilio-and-the-architectonics-of-heart-and-sound/

no©2011 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

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