Review | By Josh Landry / Musique Machine
OSTN | PIETRO GROSSI (Sergio Armaroli)
Sergio Armaroli & Pietro Grossi’s OSTN is described in the liner notes as a piece for „vibraphone and tape“, a delirious midnight reverie of cold, aqueous resonances and bell-like tones from Sergio Armaroli’s vibraphone. It is pleasantly reverberant, as if emerging from a sewer pipe. The tape effects are generally so subtle as to constitute a faint hiss in the background for most of the recording. Only in rare moments when the vibraphone is completely removed are any tape effects clearly audible, and they still seem to be comprised of faint static. Initially, I find it to be an enjoyable texture, but it begins to feel undirected and meandering by the 3rd piece, an 18-minute track not dissimilar from the 15-minute opener. The vibraphone playing is only quasi melodic, sounding more like improvisatory noodling than anything planned, despite the (extremely lengthy) liner notes describing the vibraphone compositions as ‚ostinati‘, implying the repetition of a short figure. There are indeed chord progressions, sketched in tremolo, but the only emotion I get from it is a vague eeriness. The repeating nature of the chord progressions means that nothing essentially progresses or changes throughout the runtime of each (long) track. In some ways it succeeds as a background ambient space, but it’s hard to find anything engaging for active listening. […]