Domenico De Clario - Shaker Road

Domenico De Clario, a visual artist currently living in Australia, was involved in a project called "the quiet in the land: everyday life, contemporary art and the shakers". where he lived in a Shaker village in Maine, by a lake, for a month, and while blindfolded, painted, wrote poems and played piano every day he was there. Apparently Burnt Friedman heard some of these recordings in a car and decided to release it (thank god someone did). another totally random find, what drew me to this random CD was first the breathtakingly gorgeous photography on the cover (funny it's of NYC and not the Shaker village though), and second the packaging looked like a Non-Place release.

knowing nothing about Domenico's other work, the music on this CD is of a very rare quality judged on its own merits. forever autumn, eternal dusk... the artist becomes a medium and these solo piano improvisations recorded at sunset gradually dissipate and dissolve with patient grace, like sunlight slowly dissapearing over the horizon. supposedly with no formal training what so ever, the playing is effortless, and the compositions feel like a direct sonic translation of a meditative inward journey.

an excerpt from text on the sleeve:

"... perceive architecture, city, continent or idea as a body,
dynamicised by its own internal energy-receiving and diffusing structure,
much like our bodies' energy-flows are regulated by the chakras. ...

in order to facilitate this proces I have sat blindfolded within each
body's centre from sunset to sunrise, through solstices, equinoxes,
equinoxes, eclipses and full-moons, all the while touoching the keys of a
piano. I believe that my own body and that of the piano might in this
context function as a receiver-transmitter, receiving/transmuting the
inaudible through my body and sub-sequently transmitting it as
keyboard-sound....

I sit blindfolded at the piano because it helps me to stay longer inside
each second; the paradox is that whilst so blindfolded I am able to "see"
more clearly than before, in this state the seeing becomes more important
than what ever can be seen, enabling one to reach deeper into the self
than any examination of form could ever acheive...

the resultant experience of "blind-listening" might remind us of the
paradox we encounter when, on being asked to describe the "inner" world,
we find it impossible to say what it is or how it is, nbut rather, on
looking at the evidence around us, all we can say is: "not-this".

I offer "not this" to you."

___________________

I'm not uploading it because this recording is not only still in print, but is also cheap if you get it used:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006I9FQ/sr=1-1/qid=1147280190/ref=sr_1_1/104-4414952-1137540?%5Fencoding=UTF8