Rotta by Valentina Magaletti
Since its founding back in 2014, Blume Editions has carved a unique place in cultural landscape, issuing free standing works, spanning the historical and contemporary, that represent singular gestures of creativity within the field of experimental sound. Joining their broad efforts in building networks of context and understanding that already includes the efforts of Werner Durand, Bruce Nauman, John Butcher, Jocy de Oliveira, Mary Jane Leach, Julius Eastman, Alvin Lucier, and others, Blume’s latest, “Rotta”, an absolutely stunning, exploratory gesture of solo percussion and electronics by Valentina Magaletti shines like a beacon of hope into strange and uncertain times.
Born in Southern Italy and conservatory trained, Valentina Magaletti first emerged on the London scene during the early 2000s. Over the last two decades, her work as a drummer and percussionist of rare and unparalleled talent has cut wild path across numerous idioms of music, collaborating with Nicolas Jaar, Jandek, Charles Hayward, Graham Lewis, Thurston Moore, and numerous others, in addition to her work within Tomaga, Holy Tongue, and Vanishing Twin.
“Rotta”, a work for percussion and electronics, draws upon Magaletti’s enduring, exploratory pursuit of ecstatic ritualism through sound and joins her growing body of efforts, begun with 2020’s “A Queer Anthology of Drums”, that encounters her working as a solo performer, among most challenging creative positions for an improvisor. Recorded in a single take within the nearly empty void of Cafe Oto in London, during late October of 2020 - one of a handful of months between the UK’s first and second lockdowns - “Rotta” encounters Magaletti’s occupying an explicitly experimental realm, weaving a remarkable tapestry of polyrhythms from behind the kit into the ambience of the room and further electronic interventions.
Deeply emotive and cathartic, drawing upon its title’s double meaning in Italian - “broken” and “route” - the double side long piece displays intense virtuosity and direct, real-time immediacy, balanced against the unmistakable presence of vulnerability and risk; profoundly human and expressive cries sent through Magaletti’s hands, amplified by skin, wood, and spun brass. Played against bristling textures of electronics, complex rhythms allude to the utterances of vocal language and speech, staggering and dancing toward deeper meanings that only the beat can express.
Belonging to the sinfully underrepresented discipline of solo percussion within recordings of experimental music - contemporary or otherwise - Blume Editions is thrilled to present Valentina Magaletti’s “Rotta”, an immersive expanse of sonorous texture, ambience, and rhythm, cohesively bound at the borders of freely improvised noise. Issued in a limited edition of 300 copies on 'coral pink' vinyl (Pantone170 C), with liner notes by Bradford Bailey, its deeply intimate sense of space, tension, and dynamics focus the lens on one of the most dynamic artists working today.
