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'Together' – Gigi D’Amico (SBA #049)

As is customary with See Blue Audio, once a cycle of releases is complete, we start again with something different. The first release of 2024 was also the label’s third compilation, ‘Shade Rather Than Light: Anthology | Three’, which covered the previous 15 releases, many of which were of a more experimental nature. For the next release of 2024, we welcome a new artist to the roster, Gigi D’Amico, and our second from Barcelona following D-Fried’s longform track, 'The Spirit of the Young Poets’, released in October 2023. Here the similarities end as Gigi’s ‘Together’ project takes the label in a new direction with a curved ball of raw electronic energy. As the forty-ninth release on See Blue Audio, it provides a musical tangent as well as drawing attention to one of the most pressing, and at times tragic, issues of our time.

To those who know the underground music scene in Barcelona, Gigi D’Amico will be a familiar name. The Sicilian-born musician, producer, sound engineer and DJ has always blazed his own trail. He also works as a shoe designer and photographer, and manages Raval Music, a recording studio, radio station, record label and DJ school based in Raval, the historic area in the heart of Barcelona where immigrants and those from marginalised groups often make their home. Raval Music and Gigi’s creative work are infused with the nervous tension and bristling atmosphere of this neighbourhood.

In 2023, shocked by the images of people crossing and sometimes perishing in the Mediterranean Sea, Gigi was driven to create the ‘Together’ art project. Powered by direct human contact in real time, this multimedia installation, including video and live music, triggers dynamic sounds of hope and cry as a tribute to the emigrants risking their lives. It acts as a call for people to give a hand to help others.

The nine-track ‘Together’ album is an expansion of the soundtrack to the project. As Gigi explains, “My creative process all starts in my head based around my social and political perspectives, filtered through my experiences as a Buddhist practitioner and Sicilian, now living in the ‘ghetto’ of Raval. I could picture the installation in my mind; the mood was there and so was the soundtrack, permeating the message and sonically activates feelings of oneness and wholeness in the face of pain. To keep it real and raw, everything was recorded live.”

This intensity and passion can be clearly heard throughout the music, produced using a minimal studio setup and analogue equipment. It also draws on Gigi’s many influences, often more visual than musical, including analogue photography and black and white cinema, notably Italian neorealism and post-neorealism. The sounds and beats can be jagged and discordant reflecting the strong emotions underlying them, but these are complemented by additional tracks, including ‘Isolated Heart’ and ‘Whispering Nebula’, specially commissioned to reflect the ambient and beatless sensibilities of See Blue Audio. They add a trace of nuanced melancholy to the surrounding electronic defiance, and, as the title of the closing track, ‘Nature of Capitalism’, suggests, we all remain at the mercy of powerful forces.

This may sometimes make for uneasy listening, but these are uneasy times. As such, the ‘Together’ project and its accompanying album are a vital testimony demanding and deserving of our attention.

‘Together’ video presentation: youtu.be/Rgtw90zxqiw

Photography: Ketevan Gvinepadze.