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03 italian ambient part 3
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With limited hindsight, these years are difficult to encapsulate. In a post-sampling environment, referentiality deepens; artists are able to deploy existing worlds as a new kind of primitive, wringing affect from abstraction. Overtones from past and present meld into a rich and resonant whole.

Old luminaries reappear, among them Walter Maioli, Roberto Musci, and Gigi Masin, with the latter producing the finest work of his four-decade career. Donato Dozzy continues a prolific arc begun in the middle aughts, shining both independently and in collaboration. And newcomers like Caterina Barbieri and Marta De Pascalis get repeat features in this third installment, their budding discographies replete with both homages and provocations.

If we are to attempt to essentialize Italian ambient music, we might say something about unabashed sentimentality, or unflagging eclecticism, or garbo. But this is to generalize where particularities contain all the richness.

– AF

Track listing forthcoming in the next few days... I just really wanted to publish this one in 2025.

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