Like a Zoo in Slow Motion …
Listening again to Luigi Russolo’s Risveglio di una citta, I am reminded of the macabre of the imagination of the Futurists and how this effects me now as I listen to this Intonarumori. Luigi Russolo-Corale 1921 (Classic Industrial Noise/Experimental Music)
There is a baseness to the piece of experimental music, this “Art of Noise”, since there is an instant and direct physical, emotional, and psychological response to it. The title translates to the “Awakening of the city” and its ghostliness is at once unbearable and hard to move away from.
The sounds begin to sound like a zoo … the sound a zoo would make if it began to walk, to be, in slow motion … sad elephants winding down into a melancholy slowness, a lion yawning for minutes straight, cages rattling, locks breaking, freedom a slow-motioned heartbeat away.
Odd that despite the Futurists penchant for violence, speed, and riotous action, this sedate and meditative piece of music would emerge. It is an ode, a love letter to their new world of speed and metal, machines and transport, their world deepening like a drain, the world suddenly so close.
