Dig! Delve! Damn!
It is a wild dream, unlike any other, textures of sound, part organic, part machine, layers upon layers of intricate audioscapes, evolving into a 20-minute soundtrack out of space and time, a journey to distant lands of sonic temptation. By now you may have realised that we are absolutely overwhelmed by the latest 8-track offering from internationally acclaimed producer and performer Cristiano Crisci, aka Clap! Clap!, "one of Italy's brightest new talents, [known] to bring together disparate inspirations and styles onto the dancefloor of his mind".
As part of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's RE:VIVE initiative and realised in collaboration with the Research Centre for Material Culture's Unlocking Sounds project, Clap! Clap! as well as fellow producers Ash Koosha and Parrish Smith were provided access to the Amsterdam-based Tropenmuseum's sound archive, "which features thousands of original field recordings from around the globe dating back to the 1920s. This collection was started by Dutch conservationist J.C. Lamster and Jaap Kunst, who would eventually coin the term ‘ethnomusicology’: the study of music in its cultural and social context. The archives do not only include recordings of music, but also stories, narratives, languages, rituals, dance and other auditory signals from the past."
There, each producer was able to get familiar with the source material, while conferring with leading researchers from the University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University, Leiden University, and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies: "To have the honour of digging through the Dutch audio archives was like a dream come true! I was very excited to delve in and explore the vast differences between those countries. It was also an important responsibility to approach the project with respect for the sources of recordings, as many were from the ex-Colonies of the Netherlands", Clap! Clap! explains.
Clap! Clap! eventually proceeded to sample the source material and translate the various sounds via his own individual style to achieve fascinating results, as he "[stripped[ down his bombastic, multilayered take on global rhythms, jazz, and footwork, letting the samples take center stage. Drawing on the archive's recordings from Afghanistan, Suriname, Zambia, Bali, Libya, India, Uzbekistan & Morocco, accompanying and accentuating them with his singular voice".
Enter "DIG! DELVE! DAMN! (Dutch Archive Edition)", which you can stream and download for free right here. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we're talking about. Stunning!!!
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