Paradigmi Gnoseologici is finally ready. When I first started recording it, the past autumn, I had no idea to what extent the recorded music would have matched the music that was living inside my head. I also had no idea how long it would have taken me to create a sound that I liked and achieve a satisfactory quality. Eventually, it took the time of a pregnancy, and it turned out to be a good approximation of the concepts I had in mind. Occasionally, reality went beyond my initial ambitions, partly due to the good work done by who sided up with me for all this time (i.e. my producer Max Titi), managing to capture the essence of what I wanted to express and shaping the morphosyntax of physics and technology to translate ideas into reality.
The title of the album is taken from the unplugged show I performed till last year, called Messa a Punto di Alcuni Paradigmi Gnoseologici (a pun roughly translatable as “Fixing Up A Few Gnoseological Paradigms”, where the word Messa is a reference to cristian rituals). The file rouge of that show was the proposal of a music genre based on scientic thought and mentality, conceived - in the wake of Carl Sagan’s thought - as a source of immense liberty, joy, as well as cerebral and emotional satisfaction, as directly opposed to the useless and restrictive conceptual complications of the dominant superstitious paradigm. The album collects some of the compositions from that show, but this time putting as much emphasis on the quality and strength of the arrangements.
There are however many other underlying elements that unify this composite and poliedric album. First of all, it contains all my passion for languages and linguistics. Almost each song of the album is written in a different language, as a testimony to my past experiences of learning and cultural confrontation. Other languages, such as the “dream language" that makes up most of gravità, have been created on the basis of specific linguist criteria, a bit like the Elvic language by Tolkien, albeit not to the same extent of elaboration.
Furthermore, each track is characterised by a tension for travelling. When you listen to the beginning or a fragment in the mid of a song such as Est, it is very hard to guess how the song will unravel. It is my way to lead you inside a cognitive as well as geographical journey, the end of which nobody can predict, just as I can never predict where my travel experiences will lead me (well, very often they lead me… East). Sometimes the songs may not be immediately thoroughly enjoyable, when compared to tracks that follow standard pop structures, but I am pretty sure that whoever is similarly tuned to the way I perceive art and music, and has the patience to actually listen to the compositions all the way through, will feel highly gratified and satisfied, because of the extra intellectual stimulation that accompanies the emotional experience of the melody. Paradigmi Gnoseologici is analbum to live, not just to listen to, because behind every musical, stylistic and verbal choice you will find an entire world of meanings, a true and complex cultural project. This music is not merely meant to entertain. It is involved music, made to change the world, or at least the effort of one person to change the world around himself. It is my way to challenge dominant paradigms I will never be able to identify myself with.
Paradigmi Gnoseologici - Tracklist
Gravità
Ziqqurat
םלה על כותל
Cose naturali
Сандански
Archeologia della mia infanzia
Est
Gnoseological Paradigms
Total duration: 44' circa
The CD comes with an original DVD featuring:
A high-resolution version of the critically-acclaimed Gravità videoclip
The exclusive videoclip Archeologia della mia infanzia, not uploaded to Youtube
Paolo Ferrarini: An Introduction
The producer Max Titi on Paradigmi Gnoseologici
Gravità: roma3filmfestival 2008
UNRELEASED AUDIO TRACK: Soon There Will Be Light, interpreted by JESSICA
