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Spiralis Aurea

by Stefano Pilia

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  • Spiralis Aurea
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

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  • Spiralis Aurea
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Deluxe 2LP edition, 250 copies, Letterpress printed cover, manual gold foil, booklet

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  • Spiralis Aurea
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Deluxe CD edition, includes one bonus track

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1.
CRUX 06:09
2.
CODEXIII(+) 06:27
3.
IMAGO 05:54
4.
ASCENSIO 08:04
5.
SPIRALIS 07:28
6.
7.
CODEXIII (O) 06:46
8.
OUROBOROS 06:24
9.
HANNAH 04:46
10.
11.
12.
XIII 06:22
13.

about

Venturing into untapped realms of creative exploration, the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia, returns to Die Schachtel with a double LP of material that intertwines traces of sacred geometry, collective experience and elusive connections between nature and human kind. “Spiralis Aurea” encounters the composer venturing into unchartered waters, exploring notions of spirituality via a body of twelve compositions, recorded in various combinations with a cast of all-star instrumentalist; Alessandra Novaga, iosonouncane, Silvia Tarozzi, Mattia Cipolli, Ensemble Concordanze, Elisa Bognetti, Enrico Gabrielli, Valeria Sturba, Giuseppe Franchellucci, Adrian Utley, and Cecilia Stacchiotti.

The roots of “Spiralis Aurea” rest within Pilia’s longstanding, personal engagement with the spiritual and an epiphany had during a visit to the Futa Pass cemetery, the resting place for German soldiers killed in Italy during the Second World War. Deeply moved, he reflected on the profound meanings laying below geometry of its design; “a place"crossed" by thoughts about the landscape, history, symbols, rituals. A work offering a reflection on life and death. A prayer for the living and the dead.”

Drawing its title from the Golden Spiral - also known as the golden ratio, golden section, golden mean, or divine proportion - a mathematical formula and geometric form that has maintained both mystical and creative significance for millennia, each of the 12 works that comprise “Spiralis Aurea” began with a figure or process that is both geometric and symbolic, drawn by Pilia, that slowly translated into tangible organizations of sound.

Displaying a deep resonance with works by La Monte Young, Arvo Pärt, Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Terry Riley, that have witnessed trajectories of experimental music delving toward the spiritual, divine, and metaphysical, Pilia’s “Spiralis Aurea” culminates as a series of sonic meditations, leaving room within their spacious forms to encourage active listening. Calling up echoes of ancient musics within their optimistic, forward thinking tones, across various arrangements of instrumentation - double cello quartet and bass, horns quartet and bass organ, string quartet, string quartet and organ, cello quartet, solo organ, cello solo and synthesizer, electric guitar quartet, guitar quartet and synthesizer, piano and violin - Pilia sculpts a striking intersection between acoustic and electroacoustic process, drone, and chamber music, harnessing the literal and abstract in search of order and higher meaning within a chaotic and uncertain world.

Overwhelmingly beautiful, conceptually rich, and marked by a profound sense of emotive tension, Stefano Pilia’s “Spiralis Aurea” is issued as a pure gold double vinyl LP in a limited deluxe edition of 250 copies, housed in a beautiful sleeve designed by Bruno Stucchi-Dinamomilano, painstakingly letterpress printed with a 1915 German press machine with a hand-painted and applied gold foil shining on a rust-coloured materic paper of Franciscan inspiration.

credits

released March 15, 2022

Side A

CRUX
(for double cello quartet and bass)
Mattia Cipolli / cellos

CODEXIII (+)
(for horns quartet and bass organ)
Elisa Bognetti / horns
Stefano Pilia / bass organ

IMAGO
(for string quartet)
Ensemble Concordanze
Alessandro Di Marco / violin
Elena Maury / violin
Alessandro Savio / viola
Mattia Cipolli / cello

Side B

ASCENSIO
(for organ)
Enrico Gabrielli / organ

SPIRALIS
(for string quartet and organ)
Valeria Sturba / violins
Giuseppe Franchellucci / cellos
Stefano Pilia / organ samples

AUREA parte I
(for cello quartet)
Mattia Cipolli / cellos

Side C

CODEXIII (O)
(for cello solo and synth)
Giuseppe Franchellucci / cello
Stefano Pilia / modular synth

OUROBOROS
(for organ)
Stefano Pilia / organ samples

HANNAH
(for electric guitar quartet)
Adrian Utley / 12 strings guitar
Alessandra Novaga / e guitar
Stefano Pilia / baritone and e guitar

Side D

CODEXIII (())
(for el. guitar quartet and synth)
Alessandra Novaga / e guitars
Stefano Pilia / baritone and e guitars
IOSONOUNCANE / synth

AUREA parte II
(for cello quartet)
Mattia Cipolli / cellos

XIII
(for piano and violin)
Cecilia Stacchiotti / piano
Silvia Tarozzi / violin

Written and composed by Stefano Pilia
CRUX recorded and mixed by Stefano Pilia at BlindSun, Bologna
CODEXIII (+) and IMAGO recorded and mixed by Bruno Germano at Vacuum studio, Bologna
ASCENSIO recorded by Claudio Tortorici at Tempio Valdese, Torino, mixed by Diego Castioni at Cabot Cove, Bologna
SPIRALIS and AUREA recorded and mixed by Diego Castioni at Cabot Cove

Produced by Fabio Carboni and Bruno Stucchi, Die Schachtel
with the support of Bologna UNESCO city of music
Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi

Cover concept, artwork and design by Bruno Stucchi, Dinamomilano.com
Letterpress printed by Archivio Tipografico, Turin on a 1915 Koenig & Bauer Würzburg press on Fedrigoni Materica Rust and Limestone
Typefaces: Metodo and Garaldo, by AT/Studio 23.56, Turin
Gold foil by Il letterista, Turin
Photographic documentation by Matilde Piazzi

Special Thanks to all the musicians and sound engineers who participated and contributed to the realization of this work: Miguel Bermejo and the Valdese Temple of Turin, Luciano Ardiccioni and The German Futa Pass Cemetery, Matteo Gharehb, Matilde Piazzi, Alessandro Kostis, Valentina Lanzetti, Bruno Stucchi, John Duncan, Fabio Carboni, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Rossella Merighi, Jonathan Clancy, Paolo Fiore Angelini, Emidio Clementi, Enrico Croci, Paolo Spaccamonti, Laura Agnusdei, Edoardo Marraffa, Manuel Giannini, Giacomo Pilia, Tiziana Viviani, Stefano Piazzi, Silvia Morselli for their support and help.

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