- This companion to the Italian artist's 2019 album is colder and bleaker, but gripping all the same.
- There's a searching feeling that simmers beneath each Caterina Barbieri piece. Over the past decade, the 33 year-old Italian composer has plugged every patch point and turned each knob, scouring the circuitry of her modular synth to find the spirit floating within. Her approach generally involves cascading sequences built from staccato tones, all splashed with reverb and sent through a ricocheting delay. Barbieri's music, bright and kaleidoscopic as a bismuth crystal, uses repetition to make time alternately stretch and droop. While her particular style of minimalism is rapturous, it's hardly ever blissful. The shapes of her songs morph constantly, but the melodies—beautiful as they are—never resolve. There’s a loneliness to her work, each note decaying into a space too vast to measure.
Barbieri compiled her latest album, Myuthafoo, from the same sessions that produced 2019's Ecstatic Computation. The two records feel like cousins, sharing some of the same DNA but holding vastly different outlooks. Ecstatic Computation had an eye toward humanity, at times incorporating phase-shifting vocals or letting compositions collapse like an acrobat practicing a balancing act. There was a wobbliness to the record that felt organic. Myuthafoo, on the other hand, removes those human touches. It's just as trance-inducing as Ecstatic Computation, but feels more desolate. This is the sound of immaculately polished machines operating in perpetuity, speeding up and slowing down at precise intervals.
Each of the six tracks on Myuthafoo shares a simple arc: Open with minimal elements, patiently build into a thick wall of sound and then disintegrate methodically. In the title cut, Barbieri slowly adds harmonics to the rounded, filtered waves so that by the midpoint, the buzzing resonance has swallowed the song whole. It all becomes engulfed by yawning reverb, pulling back like a Kubrick zoom. "Sufyosowirl" begins with a punchy sawtooth line, steadily increasing the length of each note. As the melodic phrases overlap through ping-pong delay, Barbieri shrinks them into percussive blips. The effect is like watching storm clouds gather and dissipate. In clammier hands, the repetitive structure might grow tiring, but Barbieri has such a deft command of texture and timing that each arrangement becomes a distinct mesmerizing journey.
It's a testament to Barbieri's skill as a composer that she's able to wring genuine emotion from such bracing music. Previous records have achieved a more plaintive feeling through the considered addition of harpsichord, guitar and vocal harmonies. But here, the lived-in feeling is gone, replaced with the kind of cold despair you feel when staring at a multi-lane highway. The pulsing "Math of You" is unforgiving and urgent, the last human worker looking around at a factory staffed by robots. "Memory Leak" is all metallic scrapes and swirling phrases, terrifying but enthralling.
Barbieri uses effects to build massive sonic spaces, so listening headphones can be utterly transportive. But, perhaps more than any of her other albums, Myuthafoo deserves the kind of immersion a giant PA can provide. The sub-bass of "Swirls of You" should shake your ribcage. The portamento in "Alphabet of Light" should lift you off the ground. It once again proves Barbieri to be a singular talent in the realm of synthesizer music, creating enormous, intimidating, completely enveloping work.
Tracklist01. Memory Leak
02. Math Of You
03. Myuthafoo
04. Alphabet Of Light
05. Sufyosowirl
06. Swirls Of You