Angelo Bignamini - Anna [Staaltape]

Incoming via mail from Berlin only recently is Angelo Bignamini's "Anna", the most recent musical outing put on the circuit via the legendary Staaltape-label which saw its very first release all the way back in 1982. Issued on re-used, and therefore sustainable, commercial cassette tapes with a hand-crafted collage cover the eight tracks on this album were composed over a course of six months from February to August 2k21 and are conceptually covering the changes in the life and the surroundings of the Italian composer. "Anna" starts out on a slightly wobbly, dreamy solo piano tip, drifts further into realms of wonky tape manipulation sequences, cut-up Field Recordings and Plunderphonics as well as various collage and layering techniques, droning, extended and surely melancholia-inducing string sequences alongside what seems to be a close up recording of swarming insects - bees, probably -, eerie Industrial soundscapes with a well score'esque quality at the beginning of the B-side whilst surprisingly even turning towards home-recorded singer-songwriter dabblings reminiscent of the legendary Augsburg-based label Dhyana Records for a mere few seconds before diving into crackly, kitsch-dripping outtakes from Classical recordings and recorded tape machine vocals of unknown origin, all accompanied well by the slightly worn out nature of the previously used tape material. One for avid collectors of FoundSounds, lo-fi recordings and the mediums that come with them.