Francesco Cavaliere’s “xilo obachia que tentenna” has been one of my most-played songs since I first heard it earlier this year and now it finds its kin on a new cassette, Xylomania, self-released via the Italian artist’s Bandcamp page.
These mathematical, methodological, mysteriously murmuring songs conjure diagrams and fractals and other blue prints drawn out by the steady hands of sly magicians. Moments catch you from the corner of your eye, like a wink or a grin. Did that actually happen? Can I believe what’s been seen?
Slights of hand return again and again. We’re listening to the voices of machines with Cavaliere being the one to ease them out gently. He gives each the confidence to speak. He wraps his own voice up with theirs. Garbled like dreams. Gentle like lullabies. Anthropomorphically animated. Absolutely alien.
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