Music Is Dying Now: Alessandro Bosetti ‎- Zwölfzungen

"12 portraits of languages I don't understand"

Alessandro Bosetti is a longtime friend and a musical colleague of many of our friends as well. We have followed Bosetti's creative development over the years and admire his challenging and often discomfort inducing works and live performances. Though we assumed that his sharing the recording of Zwolfzungen with us a few years back was just to keep us abreast of another of his unique projects( this one originally as a piece for German radio), it's power and musicality struck us as being his most realized work up to that point and it was clear and without hesitation that we should make it tangible via the label. We feel it is a perfect synergy of Bosetti's deep interest in text based works combined with all of his broad and dexterous musical abilities. A subtle and understated masterpiece. We are also proud to once again be working with Shelter Bookworks(re: Area C) on the creation and design of the handmade card stock sleeve. Their attention to the detail of materials and execution is unmatched. The inclusion and choice of the eerie and charming drawings of Erin Womack as the artwork for the panels help make this document more than the sum of its parts and something to behold.

I like to listen to languages I don't understand. I like the moment when the understanding of words stops and every language starts to "make noise". All languages have a special sound, some more than others have particular acoustic characteristics that delight this musician's ears.

For Zwolfzungen I collected recordings of eleven languages I'm not, or partially, able to speak and understand. Eleven languages I encountered in my travels, whose sound I especially liked. Moreover, I invented a twelfth one, developed and learned during the past years and featured as a last installment of the series. Zwolfzungen could be translated as twelve languages as well as twelve tongues. I try to "misunderstand" each one of those languages as much as I can. They include, among others: Dogo, Basque, Urdu, Mandarin, Cherokee, Japanese and Zulu.

For each language's recording I developed a specific piece of music, disengaging from the meaning of the words and instead concentrating on its sound and rhythm. The pieces are not intended as features or documentaries as I'm not inserting any explanatory aspect into their context. I used whatever compositional ideas and methods the source material inspired : tape collage, electro-acoustic processing, max/msp, low-fi sound devices and then performed them live, mixing my voice with pre-recorded and realtime electro- acoustic materials. Each piece is a unique musical universe and be may listened to individually or as a total group.

Zwolfzungen was originally commissioned in 2005 as a radio art piece for DeutschlandRadio Kultur in Berlin and re-worked as a multi-channel live performance in 2007.

Artwork

artist bio:

Born in Milan, Italy in 1973. Composer and sound artist. Bosetti works on the musicality of spoken words and unusual aspects of spoken communication and produced text-sound compositions featured in live performances, radio broadcasting and published recordings. In his work he moves on the line between sound anthropology and composition often including translation and misunderstanding in the creative process. Field research and interviews often build the basis for his abstract compositions along with electro-acoustic and acoustic collages, relational strategies,trained and untrained instrumental practices, vocal explorations and digital manipulations.He's curious about differences so he travels. Since 2006 he's been living and working in West Africa, China, Taiwan, Holland, Scandinavia, United States , Germany and Italy. For the future he plans to be living and working between Berlin (D), Milano (I) and Baltimore (USA) His recordings have appeared on Die Schactel, Crouton, Errant Bodies, Grob, Potlach and numerous other imprints.