Air/Alessandro Baricco - City Reading Tre Storie Western

Air - Alessandro Baricco
City Reading Tre Storie Western
Astralwerks
Grade: A-

In an amazingly interesting work of collaboration, Air provides the music, and well the soundtrack, to Alessandro Baricco's City. Air, as most know, are world-renowned composers of all types of sounds. If you ever saw The Virgin Suicides, you would never forget the astounding and memorable soundtrack provided by Air. Alessandro Baricco is considerably less known in the U.S., but is widely known in his native Italy. Baricco is considered by some to be Italy's greatest contemporary writer and his last several books have garnered international acclaim. One of them is City and here we have Baricco reading passages from the book over the music of Air. Originally, Air and Baricco performed the piece to an audience in Rome and quickly realized they needed to preserve the moment by going to a studio in Paris a month later. There are three central stories ("Bird," "La Puttana Di Closingtown" (The Whore of Closingtown) and "Caccia Alluomo" (Manhunt)) with a number of passages that make up each story; accounting for nineteen tracks on the record. Although a few of you may know Italian or may pick up on a few common phrases, most people are going to be lost on the actual story and just move along to the sweet music. Yet, they have provided the English translation to all of the stories for English-speaking listeners to follow along. The three stories are "told" in the book by Shatzy, a woman with a penchant for making up Westerns. Hence, all three stories have this theme to them. Without getting into all of the pieces, the highlight may be the telling of the second story with its sexually charged narrative. The music throughout varies in intensity but always maintains a smooth and calculated temper. This record is a very interesting piece of artistic coolness. I do hope that this will turn into some kind of trend, maybe with Air leading the charge.