Massimo Toniutti - Autofonia (Il Clangore Della Propria Voce Nell'Orecchio) 2xLP [PRE-ORDER]

Format: vinyl 2xLP
Label: Ricerca Sonora - RS10 (Italy, 2025)
Edition: 350 copies / black vinyl
Genre: Industrial, Experimental, Sound-Art
PRE-ORDER // RELEASES MARCH, 20 2025
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Info & Description (from the original label info):
Ricerca Sonora is thrilled to present the first ever reissue of "Autofonìa (Il Clangore Della Propria Voce Nell'Orecchio)", originally self-released on cassette in 1986. REMASTERED for vinyl 2xLP. Sound material, collected and composed from February to September 1986 by Massimo Toniutti. Digitized in 2018 from the original master tape cassette, and remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi in 2022.

After 39 year this masterpiece is available again as it should be.

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My archive of sound recordings began to assume an increasingly important role in the ’80s when I started collecting and documenting in a somewhat systematic way a growing number of audio cassettes. Initially there wasn’t yet a proper musical perspective in the recordings I was making, but both a playful aspect on the one hand and a documentary approach on the other prevailed. In fact a process of sound investigation had started. At the same time, all over the world, and unbeknownst to me, a network later known as Cassette Culture, using the tape as a vehicle of exchange at various levels, was already widespread. I gradually met with this tape network thanks also to names like MB, Ramleh etc., but only with the release of my first music cassette (Putrefazione e Catarsi, 1984) I somehow began to be part of that mechanism. The focus of attention, the subject which I am writing about here, however, is Autofonìa, a cassette self- released in 1986. With it the sound investigation reached a further stage. The turning point came with the purchase of the Tascam 244, embodying my first “real” concept of a recording studio and moreover a “portable” one. Field recording was already a practice of mine but being able to record and mix in the field at the same time was an absolute novelty. Meanwhile I discovered the trilogy of Amok (cf. Enrico Piva, Anticlima, spazio di Hausdorff, 2019) which I found unexpectedly familiar (it is no coincidence that he will later also become a dear friend of mine) for the use he made of the recordings, the speech segments, the sonic documents that he incorporated into his sound structures in a perfectly musical context. All this ideally reignited the potential of my own archive as well! It was as if it opened a path by entitling me to use certain extra-musical sources as well as encouraging me towards typically analog techniques that I already knew but had never exploited in terms of composition. My so-called “private collection” is akin to a “place” that I happen to visit from time to time. Having done it also on the occasion of this reissue allowed me to re-read the entire project. In addition to the original master tapes and tracks, I found a whole series of alternative takes that reminded me of what could also have been Autofonìa. I TOOK THIS OPPORTUNITY FOR MAKING A CAREFUL SELECTION, INCLUDED IN THE SPECIAL EDITION OF THIS REISSUE ►► (see Box Set). This is a juvenile experience but full of intuitions and seeds. I would say that it represents a sort of milestone towards what will be the further development of my sound research.             ~ Massimo Toniutti ~

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Massimo Toniutti's recorded output commences with 1984's care "Putrefazione e Catarsi", but it is with "Autofonia" that Toniutti begins to integrate the influence of the contemporary noise scene with a more intuitive approach. The cassette's starting points are familiar enough to anyone whose spent some time wading through early 80s, home-dubbed Industrial - there's hiss, buzz, and some crude synthesizer work holding it all together. There's theater to the electronics as they hang, unaccompanied. Autofonia moves with clear narrative and the component parts are well delineated and liberate, albeit inscrutable. The atmosphere is thick, post-mortem; it wouldn't be impossible to mistake this set as some heretofore unknown Black Dwarf cassette or outtakes from the "Lustmordekay" sessions. A rough, low-end rumble is introduced a couple minutes into the first side and provides some action atop otherwise static electronics. It's physical and fitful, like and automobile which strains to start, and fails. This is the first clue that Toniutti's concerns aren't ones of harshness or mood. A step is made outside the orthodoxy of Industrial. It isn't until the eight minute mark that the third element is introduced - a shrill vocal moan- The voice approaches and retreats in the mix as the track progresses. This variance in levels is a key component to Autofonia, as sonic elementa abruptly come to the fore, before being shunted to the background. Around the eleventh minute, Toniutti begins to fluctuate the pitch of the vocals, occasionally dropping them to a guttural bass.

The track's title, "Fago Fagogit (Autogagi)", betrays Toniutti's subtle morphosis of sonic elements. Fago translates from Italian as phage - a combining form for a thing which devours. Fagocit translates to phagocyte - a cell which protects the body by consuming toxic or pernicious material. Autofagi, on the other hand, can be translated as self-eating. This progression of the root, -fago, is mirrored in Toniutti's transformation of a handful of sources. Linguistic fact menifests as sonic action. When the voice is introduced, it's solitary and distant, eventually expanding to an almost choral chant, before matching the high-pitched electronics of the final section. Chiming bells appear, offset by the return of chanted vocals. This eventually overtaken by squeals of feedback, which themselves approximate the vocals. An affinity can be made with Jerome Clegg - era Ramleh, but unlike Throatsuck or Prossneck, there is never an element of smut or sleaze to Toniutti. Instead, the sound is monastic, with an unease more deeply seeded than any full frontal assault could achieve. The subtitle of the cassette is "Il Clangore Della Propria Voce Nell'Orecchio", or the clang of his own voice in the ear. Fair enough.

Daknotrompetenschall takes up the entire B side and is in many ways the central piece of the cassette. The track opens with a platter of Industrial bravado - the clanging metal percussion could almost pass for djembe constructed out of car parts. After about four minutes, the percussive battery is supplanted by the concrete reality of metal. This is perhaps the first instance on tape where Toniutti evokes place, as we could very well be listening to hanging strips of metal as they strike each other in the wind. Whereas side A dislocates time through taoe and electronics, Daknotrompetenschall is located by movement within space and the action of the hand; it feels like the progression of a sound system in real time. In that sense, Daknotrompetenschall looks like Toniutti's subsequent work much more than the A side. Whereas the act of the hand is felt in the percussive introduction, the bulk of the track is very much an autonomous construction. Its virtue is that it exists. This perpetual sound system eventually dies down, before the percussion returns. But its disassociative now; Toniutti raises and lowers the levels so the listener is discouraged from engaging on a visceral level. The echo of a tape machine can be heard as the percussion dies down in the final seconds. Physical action is replaced by the ghost of tape, or perhaps percussion only existed as a ghost to begin with. In that way, the ear is a necromancer.
[Allen Mozek]

Taken from Fordammin'1 magazine. Used by kind permission of the author. 

Tracklist:
A1 Fago Fagòcit (Autòfagi) (part one)
B1 Fago Fagòcit (Autòfagi) (part one)
C1 Dáknotrompetenschall (part one)
D1 Dáknotrompetenschall (part two)