With its roots in Tom’s Augmented Nature recordings, Tom and Sam’s experimental work on Vaucanson’s Muse and Hangkerum, and their joint work with Britt from the early days of London’s Not Applicable collective and Scooterworks sessions, Verbania marks a new chapter of subtlety, intimacy, sensuality and connection – drawing on experiences in deep listening, (acoustic) ecology, meditation, as well as various ambient, immersive and improvised artforms.
Neither reducible to any one of these areas, or adequately described by any combination of them, the trio toyed with descriptions such as rewilding the imagination or even the ears… exchanging ideas of varying complexity and pretense, and debating the problematic loadedness of each of these terms, before finally settling on the title Verbania – simply put, the name of this unique area of northern Italy, where the lush wild green of the Val Grande national park encounters the faux-exotic, colonial projections of the cultivated gardens of some of Italy’s most privileged historical families.
The cover art here offers a small glimpse into the beautiful work of Britt Hatzius, which, in its immersive entirety, we felt was not possible to document in film. But nonetheless this music is infused with Britt’s spirit as much as with Tom and Sam’s – the intertwined interaction of film montages and field recordings in the live setting, becoming wound into dialogue by the sensitive and reduced improvisations of Tom’s trumpet, and resulting in the four live and almost unedited performances that can be heard here.
In the end, the trio hope very much that these tracks will serve to gently explore all of these complexities and contradictions, whilst at the same time, hoping very much that, in the moment of listening, none of this will matter at all.
We are indebted to Antonella Cirigliano of Cross Festival for commissioning this project, and also to Mona Spägele of Poesia Vocale and Manuel Bärtsch of Musiksommer am Zürichsee for their support of earlier versions of this project.
Available for pre-order on vinyl and digital now.
