Review: Luca Nasciuti - Vanishing Point

Like a gloomy drone séance in a haunted loft space, the sighs of passing ghosts whizz upward between creaky floorboards, brushing piano strings and keys on their way through. “Ark” is a place disturbed – tape playback is chewed up and spat out into reversed, vari-sped lurches, while other low frequency tones (bowed strings perhaps?) buzz restlessly and spark angry glares of overtone or dissonant harmony. There’s something very cramped about the audio space, and the music reeks of claustrophobia and unwanted intimacy – drones stoop beneath low ceilings, squashed up against restless percussive knocks of fidgety, unintentional contact.

“Mirror” begins as an ecstatic point of contrast, ripping the roof off to revel in the infinite daylight above and around; chimes and glistening feedback run in beautiful harmonic parallels, clean and metallic. It’s a momentary escape. Somewhat expertly, Nasciuti tugs the listener down through the floor again, bending glacial clangs into ugly rubs of atonality humming between fizzing electricity and malfunctioning birdsong. The three minutes of blissful release are then disclosed as a mere tease – a snatch of sweetness to bring bitter contrast to the descent back into darkness, as the walls rise up again and blot out all light and colour. One emerges out the other side of Vanishing Point with a notably bleaker outlook than before. Apparently, the gloom is inescapable.