Unknown Distances by Zero Centigrade

“Unknown Distances ” is a work from the borderland between composition and improvisation, melody and noise. It flows subdued yet black, like the arrival of a storm, which in addition to the cold and rain, can also bring back sadness and faraway loneliness - itself a reality that is always present as dark eyes watch us from every angle.

The blues is a presence across the entire work, but not the blues of the Mississippi plantation, who would have pleased Sleepy John Estes, but rather those of the Delta that remains poisoned because of sewage and is littered heavily with carnivorous plants, not unlike the skin of a black bluesman abducted by aliens.

The music is bare-boned, minimal, basic, clean, with the notes coming out measured and the tunes arriving in dribs and drabs, all the result of guitar and trumpet and little else.

All is set on the control of the physical volume of the sounds, which themselves vary continuously from micro to macro levels, thus shifting the listener's attention from the harmonic sound of the guitar to either the intangible or flaying of the trumpet.

In its many faces, “Unknown Distances ” will be a listening experience that will prove to be as sulphuric and peaceful, earthly and cathartic, as only the blues can be.


Zero Centigrade is an Italian experimental duo consisting of Tonino Taiuti (acoustic guitar) and Vincenzo De Luce (trumpet). Their sound is the result of their different experiences.

Tonino Taiuti is an author and an actor in theatre and cinema; he has worked with directors such as Enzo Moscato, Mario Martone, Gabriele Salvatores, Toni Servillo and Giorgio Barberio Corsetti.

In 2002 he began his experience in visual arts with a personal exhibition that took place at the "Serio" art gallery and “Pigrecoemme”, in Naples.

He has played with Eugene Chadbourne (live at Oblomova 07/03/2009) and Rhys Chatham (concert for six guitars, live at Teatro Galleria Toledo, 26/03/2008).

Vincenzo De Luce is an architect engaged in landscape design and art exhibitions space design.

Zero Centigrade is something between electro-acoustic improvisation and weird folk. It was created to experiment with those sounds and noises of the guitar and trumpet whose effect sometimes had the harmonic passages almost touching the song form.

It is a music impossible in its simplicity: strings touched, atonal screeching, jagged counterpoints and the timbres of a trumpet at once acidic and human as well as animal.

They love to use their instruments in an almost primitive and very physical way, reducing them to veins and lungs. Finally, the blues, seen as a way to speak of the soul, without any technicality or theory which interferes on sound.

Their live performances are halfway between music, visual arts and theatre.