I Should Have Been a Gardener, by Alessandra Novaga

I Should Have Been a Gardener

by Alessandra Novaga

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synrak Utterly evocative of Prospect Cottage and the peninsula, the sense of meditation, isolation, , uncertainty and hope. Fitting for the pandemic we are living through as I write this. A record that haunted me in the latter half of 2020 and that I keep coming back to in 2021. Favorite track: I Should Have Been a Gardener.

Barry Moffatt I’ve been a follower and admirer of Derek Jarman’ work for many years. Alessandra Novaga’s fine piece is a worthy tribute to a fine man.

Göran This is a must have album! Favorite track: Poppies in the Morning.

Stefano A moving homage to one of the greatest artists of our time, a man who always faced life with a smile and with no hypocrisy.
The sounds by Alessandra bring you in Jarman's garden and slowly introduce you in Jarman's life, with echoes from John Adams to Pet Shop Boys. The record has been beautifully released by Die Schachtel with high quality vinyl and premium paper. It is a real jewel of beauty. Thank you so much. Favorite track: The Wound Dresser.

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Limited edition 180 gr. heavyweight 12" yellow vinyl with extensive booklet
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Includes unlimited streaming of I Should Have Been a Gardener via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	April 21 11:23	buy track
2.	The Wound Dresser 08:23	buy track
3.	Poppies in the Morning 03:13	buy track
4.	Father Forgive Me 05:24	buy track
5.	I Should Have Been a Gardener 08:29	buy track

about

Offering a visionary approach to the solo guitar, Milanese experimentalist Alessandra Novaga, delivers an expansive meditation on the late filmmaker, Derek Jarman, with "I Should Have Been a Gardener", proudly presented by Die Schachtel.

Alessandra Novaga is among the leading figures within Italy’s thriving new, experimental, and improvised music scene, consistently rendering striking solo efforts, as well as equally noteworthy collaborating with Stefano Pilia, Paula Matthusen, Elliott Sharp, Sandro Mussida, Travis Just, and others. Remarkably ambitious and forward thinking, her approach to the guitar veers from the trajectories of visceral emotiveness and textural extended techniques that have held sway over the instruments applications within avant-garde contexts over the last half century, encountering her relentlessly deconstructing and rethinking its unique properties through applications of structure, resonance, space, and tone.

"I Should Have Been a Gardener" - building on from the territory explored within 2017’s "Fassbinder Wunderkammer" - is Novaga’s second LP to draw conceptually on her love for film. Rather than focusing on a fixed point of inspiration, the album takes form as a distillation, pulling from across the unique life, death, work, political commitment, and diaries of Derek Jarman. Emerging as an ethereal aural portrait of the man, sound - interventions of tonality with non-instrumental sources - and silence join in a single, unified body that seeks redemption and purification at the boundaries of life; an imprint that, like Jarman’s garden at Prospect Cottage, is magical - flowers blooming between the stones - hovering in the stark space between an endless sea and post-modern shadow of a nuclear power plant.

As remarkably listenable as it is challenging and pregnant with ideas, Novaga’s "I Should Have Been a Gardener" represents a strikingly at ease step forward in the potentialities of experimental music. Bravely taking on the ubiquitous expectations of the guitar, Novaga refused to relinquish the clarity of source and sound, forcing the ear to rethink what is accepted and known at every turn. An immersive journey from one of Italy's most important contemporary voices, available from Die Schachtel in a very limited Edition of 200 copied on 180 gr. heavyweight, yellow vinyl, accompanied by an extensive, exploratory booklet.

credits

released July 21, 2020

Composed and performed by Alessandra Novaga

Produced by Fabio Carboni and Bruno Stucchi, Die Schachtel

Recorded by Giovanni Isgrò

Mastered by Maurizio Giannotti - Newmastering Studio

Photos: Howard Sooley

Design: Bruno Stucchi, dinamomilano.com

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