Alessandro Bosetti - Zwolfzungen

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5...according to our Phil on Thu 18 Mar, 2010.

This one caused loads of office debate.... I liked what I heard of this (half of it) and that was even before I knew what the concept was. The schtick is it's '12 Portraits of Languages I Don't Understand'... or rather languages Alessandro doesn't understand. He travelled around the world recordings interesting languages and has added some music to them afterwards. It's far out I'll tell you that..... Inside the gorgeous fold out sleeve you get loads of hand drawn images and explanations of each track which make listening to each one super special. It's a weird one cos you listen to the music and think it sounds nice... and then you find out that for example the language on one track is a whistled language for some Spanish villagers in the Canaries to protect themselves from the Spanish police. Then the rack comes alive and you feel like you're privvy to some new part of human culture. The music underneath the vocal tracks is pretty amazing... a lot of is simple guitars with some electro acoustics or tape collage but coupled with the music it works ludicrously well. I have to say this is pretty inspiring!

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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 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 cardstock 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.

artist statement:
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 colllected 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 twelvth one, developed and learned during the past years and featured as a last instalment 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, dis-engaging 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.

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