Lino Capra Vaccina & Mai Mai Mai - I Racconti di Aretusa (LP)

“I Racconti di Aretusa” is the result of the encounter between Lino Capra Vaccina, a legend of Italian minimalism, and Mai Mai Mai, the alias of Toni Cutrone, a key international figure in the avant-garde/drone scene. A work that weaves together experimentation and Mediterranean echoes, creating a sonic journey of rare intensity. The collaboration was born during an artistic residency for the Ortigia Sound System (Syracuse, Sicily), a festival dedicated to the dialogue between traditional sounds and electronic research. The project took shape in an evocative location: the Church of Gesù e Maria in Ortigia, a place of extraordinary beauty whose acoustics imparted an almost mystical depth to the creative process. For two weeks, the two artists composed and recorded the album within this sacred setting, allowing the environment itself to influence the sounds and amplify their spiritual dimension. The final result was then refined by the work of Rabih Beaini, who handled the mixing at Morphine Raum Studio, and Matt Bordin, responsible for the mastering at Outside Inside Studio.

Lino Capra Vaccina, a pioneer of sound experimentation and co-founder of historic formations such as Aktuala and Telaio Magnetico (with Franco Battiato), brought to the project a refined and meditative musical sensibility. His use of vibraphone and piano creates hypnotic and ethereal atmospheres, built on deep resonances and soundscapes suspended in time. Engaging in dialogue with this aesthetic is Mai Mai Mai’s sonic language, which reinterprets and transforms the acoustic material through layered drones, hypnotic rhythms, and manipulated samples, constructing a dense and enveloping sonic universe. The result is a work that transcends time and space, a sonic passage oscillating between the sacred and the profane, between ritual and contemporaneity. Vaccina’s ancestral percussion merges with Mai Mai Mai’s electronic textures and distortions, giving life to a dialogue rich in tension and suggestion. At the same time, the location itself acts as an active element of the composition, almost as if it were an additional instrument capable of capturing and conveying the spiritual resonance of the place. The album's title is a tribute to the nymph Aretusa, a symbol of Syracuse, whose myth intertwines with water and the memory of distant times. This evocation becomes the key to understanding the entire project: just as the waters of Aretusa’s fountain preserve forgotten stories, so this album explores layers of sound and musical memory, revealing new possibilities for listening and interpretation.

“I Racconti di Aretusa” perfectly embolie Baccano’s vision: to restore a dimension of research to sound, fostering dialogue between artists from different eras and languages in a work that is not merely an encounter between past and present, but a true act of sonic rewriting. Though originating from distant musical worlds, Vaccina and Mai Mai Mai find common ground in experimentation and timbral exploration, shaping an album that reflects their artistic depth and visionary affinity.