Barnacles :: Air Skin Digger (Alma de Nieto)

Ambivalent, enigmatic, always catchy, sometimes menacing, dissonant, lysergic, pulsating, depicting a state of stillness and progression with a hint of melancholia. Whatever the project he decides to be involved in, Matteo Uggeri can’t cease to surprise us by his capacity to renew his own sound worlds, incorporating new elements and challenging musical directions.

Matteo Uggeri is one exceptionally active and creative sound artist, working under various monikers, founder member of Sparkle in Grey musical collective and newly the originator of this project titled Barnacles. Air Skin Digger is a the second Barnacles studio album, the first offering has been reviewed on Igloo. Loyal to its sound signature, the project delivers here an intriguing, personal and creative musical dialogue between sustained organic textures, post-rocking drone ambient, processed cinematic interludes and breakbeat downtempo electronica. The album is developed as one long single piece divided in several sections. Once more the soundscapes are deeply singular and mirror Matteo Uggeri’s very peculiar ability to design experimental music as a syncretism, plurality, aggregation of styles. The result is ambivalent, enigmatic, always catchy, sometimes menacing, dissonant, lysergic, pulsating, depicting a state of stillness and progression with a hint of melancholia. Imagine an impossible musical cocktail between Stars of the Lid, Boards of Canada, Fennesz, Lech Jankowski and krautrockin’ guitar wizards Achim Reichel, Günter Schickert—with hints of groovy electronic exotica and you’ll have an approximate idea. Whatever the project he decides to be involved in, Matteo Uggeri can’t cease to surprise us by his capacity to renew his own sound worlds, incorporating new elements and challenging musical directions.

Air Skin Digger is available on Alma de Nieto.