Michael Mueller
The piercing, relentlessly alto-dominant nature of this is a challenge for me at times, but the musical inventiveness - somewhere between Riech's woven intonations and Stetson's cloven invocations - is deeply compelling.
Bertucci allows notes to wither into silence, but to also rub against each other in ways almost too intimate to be comfortable. It's provocative and immersive.
Here, organic and inorganic sounds and approaches are artfully synthesised. This is bold, rewarding music.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$10USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Limited 2xLP Reissue of 'Metal Aether' & 'Resonant Field' in a beautiful gatefold jacket—download card for 'Metal Aether' & 'Resonant Field' included.
Includes unlimited streaming of 'Metal Aether'
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
Purchasable with gift card
$35USDor more
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
• This is the first installment of NNA LPX, our new Limited Edition Vinyl LP series. Features boutique packaging, utilizing locally-sourced manufacturers & small businesses from our hometown of Burlington, Vermont USA. Screen-printed jackets, hand-numbered & stamped in an edition of 350 copies.
• The first 100 LP copies will be pressed on Frosted Purple vinyl – first come first served, no additional charge. The remainder of the edition will be pressed on White vinyl.
Includes unlimited streaming of 'Metal Aether'
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Sold Out
Compact Disc
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Professionally-duplicated glass mastered compact disc comes in a full-color single panel digipack.
Includes unlimited streaming of 'Metal Aether'
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
We’re excited to welcome New York City-based composer and performer Lea Bertucci back to NNA for a brand new full-length LP, ‘Metal Aether.’ Lea’s early 2017 cassette release ‘All That Is Solid Melts Into Air’ focused on her role as a composer, with a hand-picked selection of talented musicians performing her minimal compositions. ‘Metal Aether’ instead showcases her role as a performer, revealing four pieces that represent approximately 3 years of ideas and gestures for alto saxophone and magnetic tape. Expanding on 2014’s ‘Light Silence, Dark Speech’ as well as 2015’s ‘Axis/Atlas,’ ‘Metal Aether’ develops a language of extended technique for alto saxophone that is based on a spectral, psychoacoustic, and non-linguistic approach to the instrument.
Much like the recordings of her previous NNA release, ‘Metal Aether’ continues to explore Lea’s acute interest in the nature of acoustics and the harmonic accumulation of sound, with it’s four pieces having been recorded in Le Havre, France in a former military base, and in New York City, at ISSUE Project Room. With her horn, Lea produces pulsing minimalist patterns, transcendent drones, and upper register squalls that envelop these spaces in waves of overtones, microtones, and psychoacoustic effects. Tracks like “Accumulations” explore evocative, ancient-sounding melodic figures, while tracks like “Sustain and Dissolve” relish in the microtonal relationships between overlapping sustained notes. Aside from the saxophone, Bertucci further interacts with physical space by fortifying these pieces with manipulated field recordings from diverse locations, ranging from Mayan pyramids to NYC subways. Other instruments such as prepared piano and vibraphone can be heard on this album, processed through tape to unite melody and texture together as one. Lea displays a firm grasp of the inherent possibilities of sound manipulation to maximize her music’s power through the recording process itself, mixing conflicting fidelities to achieve a deeper, more organic form of expression.
Throughout 2017, Lea fully dedicated her creative efforts toward exploring and informing her music through a variety of disciplines. In addition to recording ‘Metal Aether,’ she wrote and performed during multiple residencies, toured rigorously throughout North America and Europe, organized site-specific sonic events with the SITE:SOUND series, and published her first book “The Tonebook,” a collection of graphic scores by 17 avant-garde composers. Through these endeavors, Lea immerses herself in the essential principles of true musicianship: study, performance, curation, literature, and experimentation. It is with these tools that she connects herself with sound in all of it’s forms - live, recorded, situational, natural, and unnatural. All of these elements come together to inform the pieces found on this album, creating a sophisticated, multi-faceted, and highly personal body of work. ‘Metal Aether’ feels like the defining statement from an artist in elevated control of their form - a summary of concepts, ideas, and emotions given life from one’s mind and heart. Lea demonstrates the desirable ability to use her art to sincerely communicate in a language of one’s own personal invention, utilizing music and sound for their most meaningful and human purposes.
Lea Bertucci is a NYC based experimental musician whose work bridges performance, installation and multichannel activations of acoustic space.
Artist website: www.lea-bertucci.com
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supported by 55 fans who also own “'Metal Aether'”
Eerie, expansive, and breathtaking. This is ambient drone on an epic scale. The effect that some of these pieces have when they abruptly end is shattering -- these sounds become a part of your consciousness, and when they drop away, you're left in silence more intense than you've ever felt. Steven Moses