Allegretti improvises a soothing melody up against Giannico’s quietly soaring guitar.
Francesco Giannico and Theo Allegretti pose the “riddle of the mood” (as their final piece is christened), pose, but leave the answer up to us. Giannico is an electroacoustic and video artist, Allegretti an ambient jazz pianist, and each of their Flow Signs is a poem, with concrete references to place and oblique suggestions of temper. As a “Shy Early Morning” bleeds into a “Lazy Afternoon,” claret light chilly on the eastern horizon warms up to leaf-filtered yellow and green. Allegretti improvises a soothing melody up against Giannico’s quietly soaring guitar, as if to close the story of a good day “At Sunset” with an uplifting, reassuring happily ever after.
If the opening trilogy is restfully arcadian, “Recall” opens up a more restive, cubist worldview, first refracting a rural quayside through angular gesticultions, then tumbling into “Angustia,” where the piano is eventually overwhelmed and obliterated by dark fog, and the unanswerable “Where is the Oracle?,” which Giannico clutters and collages. Finally, the “Riddle of the Mood” leaves a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest leading back to a clearing where the early morning first shyly rose.
Flow Signs solicits closer listening and bids you find its deepest truths by following your own emotional interests.
Flow Signs is available on Oak Editions (physical) and Monkey (digital).
