Void, vacuum and emptiness — this is a challenging subject to approach using music as the primary medium of expression.
Nonetheless, Alessio Bertuzzi and his project Far Away Nebraska approach the topic with a calm confidence well suited to embrace the task.
Released July 28, Halfway from Nowhere addresses the matter with 42 minutes of contemplative, uninterrupted musical aesthetic.
The sound and corresponding emotional response of Halfway from Nowhere conjures the seeming limitlessness that wild, uninhabited spaces represent to the single individual.
Taking the artist’s careful and deliberate minimalist approach for the majority of the work, a select few notes ring out almost indefinitely, mimicking a vast, flat landscape filled with little flora and fauna.
Bertuzzi’s music is shaped with guitar and synthesizer, two instruments that, when approached using a particular set of skills and tools, can enthrall the listener in far-reaching sustain that surpasses the physical limitations of acoustic instruments.
Whether the artist calls upon a vision of the American West, the open Icelandic Highlands and expansive lava fields or the unending plains of the Eurasian Steppe, the thread of meaning remains unchanged.
Through the work’s seven compositions, these vast empty spaces offer moments that reflect this beauty and tragedy alike.
Published through the German digital-only Kordel Records, Halfway from Nowhere considers the duality of these spaces, the balance of peace and violence that dwell there.
Throughout the recording, some moments feel peaceful and at ease, while others build upon musical tension and dissonance as notes clash with one another in a prolonged drone.
In drafting a portrait of these remote, beautifully empty and dangerous spaces, Bertuzzi has not only addressed a seemingly intangible subject matter but pointed the lens back toward the listener — the infrequent visitors of these places that have endured, avoiding humanity’s drastic interruptions.
By portraying the elegance, grace and vicious ferociousness of the untamed space, Bertuzzi also contemplates ourselves and our own place in this grand duality that upon first evaluation could also be interpreted as a vast landscape — the void of the cosmos we inhabit.
“It’s the sound of a roaring thunder and the silence that follows,” Bertuzzi told listeners in a post about the new album. “It resembles life with all its intricacies and contradictions. There are quiet moments and more frantic ones.”
