Not Waving

Not Waving

The Place I've Been Missing

Ecstatic Recordings

Luminous and reflective ambient pop opus from Alessio Natalizia on a career-defining outing as Not Waving, featuring contributions from Romance, Marie Davidson, More Eaze and Spivak, plus a posthumous appearance by occasional collaborator Mark Lanegan, R.I.P. Poised and heartfelt, ‘The Place I've Been Missing’ feels like the culmination of Natalizia’s almost two decades work as a producer, songwriter, prolific collaborator and label founder, bringing together ostensibly disparate stylistic elements gathered on his travels over the years. Comfortable in both colourful pop and downcast modes, here these two ends of his repertoire come together in a way that’s perhaps eluded him in the past, marked by the passing of time and the joyous - and then suddenly painful - undulation of life as we get older. It’s that sense of ambiguous hopefulness, of joyful melancholy, that flows through the album’s veins, where the unforgettably hooky, heartbeat-shaped ‘Fool’ sits alongside the FM synths x trills anthem ‘Running Back To You” with Romance, and the trip hop swoon of ‘Again and Again’, featuring Spivak. In the spaces between, Natalizia paints in bluer shades: 'Never Let Me Go' is a nebulous scramble of purring chorals and epic, Hollywood strings; 'The Distance Between' clicks rickety piano improvisations into minimalist repetitions that dissolve into slow moving field recordings; and 'Waiting For You To Notice Me', finds More Eaze’s fluttering AutoTune gliding over a delicate piano that's brushed into a dense, harmonic crescendo. Although it’s not made explicit, it’s not...

Not Waving

Futuro (Music For The Waldorf Project)

Ecstatic Recordings

“Futuro is Not Waving’s engrossing, highly original soundtrack to Sean Rogg’s world-renowned art/theatre project. It features Ambient, environmental and tonal works & abstractions that come highly recommended if yr into Laurie Spiegel, Steve Roach, Brian Eno, Shuttle 358...  ’Futuro’ is Not Waving’s sublime synth/ambient soundtrack to one of the world’s most intense art/theatre experiences: Sean Rogg’s radically immersive ‘The Waldorf Project’ - fusing choreography, spatial design, music and performance. Drawn from more than 20 hours of material recorded between 2013-2018, it finds Alessio Natalizia exploring a style of tonal and spatial minimalism that works as a fine palette cleanser for much of what you’ve heard from him in the past. While not a new solo album, per se, the longform, Eno-like results of ‘Futuro’ demonstrate the full wingspan of Not Waving’s obsessive knowledge and emotive feel for electronic composition, making it in some senses one of the most substantial and unusual releases in his catalogue thus far. It ranges from highly emotive, site-specific synth meditations thru to bittersweet Kosmische intuitions, and milky, Eno-esque beauties. But if any part sums up Futuro's widescreen scope, it’s the final side’s 17 minutes of awning, gently curdled synth pads - originally used in a performance to 4000 people in Thailand laid in pitch black, with bodies formed in triangles while dancers caressed their faces. It ends the album with such memorable effect as to make it something of a modern day environmental/ambient classic - and perhaps our favourite Not Waving release in an...

Not Waving

Populist

Ecstatic Recordings

Not Waving takes 2017 by the scruff with his Populist EP, consolidating the myriad stripes of last year's acclaimed Animals album for Diagonal in four extended peaktime hammers forged for darkrooms, basements and warehouses alike; flirting with sleazy New Beat, nEuro EBM, Acid n0!se and deep-raved Italo.  If last year’s LP saw you thru from day-into-night, or vice-versa, this one is aimed squarely at the gurny hours of abandon in between, with ferocious acid lines and jabbing drums stripped down and strapped up to prompt reckless behaviour on the ‘floor. The Populist EP is Alessio Natalizia's strongest dancefloor statement since the one-sided Get Serious (2015) bullet. It finds him taking the opportunity to make straight-up bangers, rather than ‘songs’, which were thoroughly tried and tested over successive tours of the USA and countless shows in Europe too in the last 9 months.  Too Many Freaks is an anthem in waiting, harnessing a barely-hinged sense of chaos between its careening synth lead, acid squabble and velvet-clad kicks, before the dry-rutting jag and plaintive vox of Vibe Killer takes a dog-grip like This Heat meeting Tuning Circuits.  Top marks go to the check-your-stylus intro for Control Myself on the B-side, which holds its fizzy line into a fetid crevice of what sounds like Russell Haswell ramping with Powell, whereas the crooked clampjaw groove of Ur Lucky Ur Still Alive pivots around a sample a lone raver at Atonal, Berlin “who had no idea how she got there and what...

Not Waving

Redacted

Ecstatic Recordings

Redacted was originally issued in an edition of 100 gold tapes in 2013 and goes for £££ 2nd hand. This new version has been completely remastered by Matt Colton and comes highly recommended if you're into Pye Corner Audio, John Carpenter, Edward Artemiev...  While there’s a mutual sense of technoid momentum to both albums, Redacted is a far gauzier, freeform and sensual beast; one richly steeped in proto/post-club atmospheres and allowing his imagination to run away with itself.  Conceptually, Redacted pursues the “classified” themes of his Remote Viewing-inspired Umwelt (2013) LP into even murkier departments, drawing subtly ‘marish parallels between the cold war atmospheres that birthed original post punk, industrial and proto-techno, and the current pallor of socio-political unrest that pervades our present situation.  Omitting the original tape’s expansive closer for the sake of a single LP cut, this vinyl version plays out like an alternative soundtrack to scenes in the overgrown, radioactive zones of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, using an anachronistic palette of analogue machinery to emphasise a sense of fluid, shimmering motion and out-of-place-and-timelessness that genuinely goes straight to the head with trippy effect.   Swampy slow techno horror themes vacillate with decayed pastoral panoramas and windows of synthetic optimistic, both lush and disquietingly needling, using dissonance and sweeps of hazy noise to ultimately spell out a foreboding but dreamlike sort of electronic subterfuge and suspense that resonates with the nostalgic Stranger Things score as much as Leyland Kirby’s Intrigue & Stuff series.

Not Waving

Voices

Not Waving

“In case you slept on Not Waving's enigmatic and tripping trio of 'Voices' tapes (limited to 100 copies each) in 2014, he's entirely reworked and repackaged them in this new set designed for complete immersion in his (other)worlds. Compiled, they mark a point of transition between old Not Waving and the new Not Waving (soon to be revealed in a crushing album of dancefloor gear for Diagonal), presenting 18 reshaped mixes of the tapes' original 23 tracks, all shuffled up like a deck of tarot cards to present a whole new syzygy and narrative. Gleaning inspiration from Ivan Pavlov, Oliver Sacks, B.F. Skinner and "the relationship between perception, memory, attention and comprehension", they render a quietly burning mind full of ideas and synaesthetic sensation, from the lush drone harmonics of 'A Part of Thought' to pulsing EBM lab golems like 'The Behaviourist Approach', with a really special touch for beautifully wistful, Eldritch/Italian analog electronics in the likes of 'No Kill' or the lump-in-throat closer, 'Voices'. Perhaps the best comparison we could make is with Pye Corner Audio's 'Black Mill' volumes, but Not Waving's varied yet coherent aesthetic feels more like you're listening to a lost compilation of library music or early industrial music than the work of only one, super-talented guy.”—Boomkat