Alessandro Bosetti's Music of Language

The Milan-born, Marsailles resident Alessandro Bosetti may have started as a saxophonist and member of the influential free improvisation group Phosphor, but he has morphed into a composer and sound artist. Working solo, or with Kenta Nagai and Tony Buck in Trophies, he concentrated on the musicality of language and individual voices. His investigations drill down into the near-atomic level of speech, quite often utilizing fragments of verbal communication as repetitive building blocks. He also might repeat a word, a sentence or phrase ad infinitum, changing its common meaning into something altogether new. His talent is the ability to create insight and new meanings from the everyday utterances we call language.

Alessandro Bosetti
FasFari
Xing
2024

Some technologists collect bird songs and others chase meteorite fragments or attempt to decode the double helix DNA structures of long-extinct dinosaurs. Bosetti collects and stockpiles diverse human voices to create his "impossible choir." Sometimes his samples are entire sentences, other times just words or vocal fragments. He uses these samples on FasFari to orchestrate the experience an extraterrestrial life form might experience when encountering the human voice. An earth-born listener will recognize her fellow human's voice, but when it is decontextualized by Bosetti, numerous possibilities are present. "Fās" opens side one of the LP with a flood of voices. Sounds much like insects swarming the ear. Bosetti's samples are utterances made before the actual act of speaking. They can sound like the honking barks of geese "Fari" or sounds similar to bees "Afasia" emanating from a constantly swarming hive. Yes, these are human voices, but within the compositions, structures, and projections of Bosetti, they become unearthly. Well, that is from the perspective of alien ears. Listeners can identify patterns throughout. "Fasti" reminds one of Philip Glass's minimal repeating patterns as voices resemble a chorus of frogs that devolve into a pond of noise. "Facile" could be mistaken for Indian music, with its vocals accompanying a rhythmic tabla. The sounds are alien but only to the uninitiated. Bosetti initially strives to unbalance the listener before inviting her into his orbit. FasFari is released in a white vinyl-only format in a limited edition of 150 copies, together with 20 collector's editions which contain hand-drawn designs by Bosetti.

Alessandro Bosetti with Neue Vocalsolisten
Portraits de Voix
Kohlhaas
2024

Sound artist and composer Alessandro Bosetti set about to make portraits of individuals' voices. The question is posed to the artist, "Is this to be a portrait of the individual?" "No," Bosetti responds, "I think that you and your voice are not the same thing." His Portraits de Voix brings together a family of voices, and as he is wont to do, they are both embodied and disembodied.

Per Bosetti's modus operandi here consists of voices collected over a summer from three generations of males and females in Italy. He also recorded German, English, and French voices in Stuttgart, Berlin, and other random voices in various locations. He then chops, cuts, and recontextualizes the samples to create his collage of sound, this time also employing Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, a quintet of classical vocalists. All samples and real-time voices are used to present his production as musical theatre.

The presentation may remind you of Ghost Trance Music which Anthony Braxton has tailored to a choir group, except Bosetti is more partial to fragmentation and deconstruction as a means to realize his vision. Bosetti has presented Portraits de Voix as a live performance, directing the operatic Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart along with his vocal samples. Here he brings together all the pieces to create an imagined family. Complete sentences are juxtaposed by words and word fragments. Bosetti favors a towering babel of tongues that, unlike their namesake, can be understood. Maybe not intellectually, but certainly emotionally.

Tracks and Personnel

FasFari

Tracks: Fās; Fari; Flatus; Facies; Fatus; Afasia; Fate; Fasti; Futon; Arruffato; Facile.

Personnel: Alessandro Bosetti: composer.

Portraits de Voix

Tracks: Portraitist I; Portrait I; Portraitist II; Portrait II; Portraitist III; Portrait III (A Milano); Portraitist IV; Portrait IV; Portraitist V; Portrait V; Portrait VI; Portrait VII; Portrait VIII (Ulta si); Portraitist VI; Portrait IX; Portrait X (Porsche); Portraitist VII; Portrait XI (Vita Morte); Portrait (Tema Base); Portrait XIIX.

Personnel: Johanna Vargas: soprano; Truike van der Poel: mezzo soprano; Martin Nagy: tenor; Guillermo Anzorena: baritone; Andreas Fischer: bass; Alessandro Bosetti: portraitist.

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