Ambient music for Venice

Published: 2009 - September/October, Cultural and Artistic Paths

Enrico Coniglio is a protagonist of the Italian ambient music scene. He is living in Venice and has dedicated one of his recent works to his home city: “Glacial Lagoon”, a concept album that lends itself to providing listeners with a different view on Venetian musicality.When did your passion for music evolve?
“It’s difficult to name a precise moment… I probably owe a first approach towards music to my parents, who made me listen to old vinyls of classical music from childhood. We listened to works of composers like Claude Debussy or Maurice Ravel, more or less “popular” standard repertoire. I tried to chase after the rhythm, and to reproduce the classical arrangements with a guitar – which must have been pretty unenjoyable for eventual listeners…”

I suppose you’ll have studied music later…
“Friends of my family, who were members of the orchestra at the Fenice Theater, involved me, together with their own son, in musical studies, but I could stand it for just a few weeks. Actually, the genre of music in which I’m active today doesn’t require the knowledge of musical theory. And by the way, also Charlie Chaplin, who was an autodidactic composer, is universally considered a great melodist.”

Which instruments do you play today, and in which genre?
“I’m a ‘contrite’ guitarist because I actually wanted to play something else… and yet the guitar, as a well-tempered instrument, allows you to enter the world of music in a completely direct and amateurish way, and to make progress with easy arrangements or compositions. Over the years, I thought I could use the guitar to produce a ‘different’ sound from what this instrument is being made for: so to speak, one starts from a ‘functional use’ and arrives at a ‘concept’ that may be far indeed from the primary function.”

How do you use your guitar today?
“I like to combine the sound produced by the instrument with other sounds, generated and processed by digital means, plus natural ambient recordings that serve to render a particular sound landscape. In ‘Glacial Lagoon’ for example, one of my most recent works, the guitar is ‘artificial’ to the point of becoming totally unrecognizable, producing kind of a ‘background noise’ meant to be a ‘new melody’ that brings about a euphony harking back, in a sense, to the standards of ambient music set by the great Brian Eno.”

Apropos of ‘Glacial Lagoon’, the lagoon has been frozen in several winters. How did you try to represent that disturbing tableau in music?
“I tried to figure out a sound arrangement to ‘let down’ on the lagoon, as if to freeze it and to create a feeling of doom capable of evoking the idea of a desaster that forces survivors to cross this icy desert in order to live on. The pieces of music intend to render precisely these circumstances: the rigidity and stiffness of the ice, and at the same time its uncertain and ephemeral state of existence.”

What about the genre of ambient music in Italy?
“Actually, there is considerable fermentation, a resurfacing of ideas thanks to several artists, with whom I’m lucky enough to cooperate, by the way. Together with Emanuele Errante for example, who is active in Naples, I’ve edited the compilation ‘Zaum vol. 1’ (recently released by Psychonavigation records, an Irish label: www.psychonavigation.com), collecting eleven selections by Italian musicians from all over the country.”

In which venues do you perform? Any concerts scheduled?
“I’m going to be present at the ‘Interferences 2009’ festival that will be held in the province of Avellino at the end of October, and later, on December 10th, at the Candiani Cultural Center here in Venice (in Mestre, more precisely), for a gala presenting various songwriters of the Laverna label (www.laverna.net), like Gigi Masin and Mario Molven.”