OBSIL – Vicino

Psychonavigation

Giulio Aldinucci/Obsil – hailing from the land of my blood and roots, Tuscany – is a 30-year old composer working with orchestral samples and concrete materials in a way that is both appreciably naïve and technically competent. The nine tracks of Vicino (“Near”) range from exquisite patchworks constructed with multitudes of snippets – including cuckoo clocks and noises from a basketball court as complementary percussion – to cheap imitations of a diluted version of Fennesz. Providentially, the latter occurrences are limited; in truth, the atmospheres privileged by Obsil tend to the “short soundtrack” side, congenial melodic brilliance and a number of nifty compositional decisions tactically placed in between a general fairy-tale graciousness. The man is even able to construct charming, if not memorable music with terribly depleted presets: this is an encouragement, not a slap on the wrist, since the results of these experimentations are ear-pleasing at the very least. Something tells me that an actual orchestra in the hands of this chap would generate remarkable things. Let’s see where he goes from here.