Alio Die

Artist: Alio Die + Aglaia
P:  2017
Opera Magnetica nullifies space and time, the first song states it. Even the boundaries that by sensitivity differentiate Alio Die from Aglaia are less defined, they lose naturally.
One second before Dark is one of the most inspired songs born of their collaboration. Unmissable. Magnetic work is a synthesis of their best intuitions, chiseled songs from acoustic finishes, underground sounds that emerge only when they can conjure up visions. Nothing is more perfect than Wake of a Silver Water: the transformation that reveals everything without ever showing..

Artist: Aloi Die + Aglaia
P:  2007
LTD 900
This has been in the works for almost 1.5 years. Is there finer ambience coming from Italy outside of these two acts? And a collaboration to boot. Nice. 900 copies in the Japanese style mini-lp matte gatefold sleeve. Beautiful layout courtesy of theever-impressive designwork of Pyhai. Slow waves of soundflow suggestive of psycho-acoustic energy come with peripheral fragments of sonorities, carried on the wind, drifting as if at the edges of sleep, recalling the way echo plays in open landscapes. Private History of the Clouds feels a little like watching dust particles in a room illuminated by light rays - variously filtered by alterations in shutter angles - now suspended almost immobile, now gently agitated by soft breeze.

Artist: Alio Die + Aglaia
P:  2011
Cosmic like Three Organic Experiences, esoteric like Password for Entheogenic Experience, Vayu Rouah perform a kind of synthesis of the researches by Alio Die and Aglaia.
Vayu Rouah is the primordial wind that join cabala and sonorous alchemies, an inexorable flux with extended electro-acoustic solutions,  by a wide range of frequencies.
A very long and slow gestation of about eight years have absorbed different musical moods and have stratified itself throw the time.. sound after sound.. towards his extreme possibilities. The listeners that  loved the first chapters, that inspired this work, will find themself in perfect armony into  Vayu Rouah's spirals.

Artist: Alio Die & Amelia Cuni
P: 2001
According to Hindu mythology, the Apsaras are female spirits of nature, usually water nymphs, that represent the place where mind, water, and desire converge. It's an apt metaphor for the languid, sensual music on this disc. With Alio Die (Stefano Musso) on "drones and samples, environmental sounds and treatments" and Amelia Cuni voicing "dhrupad singing (traditional music from North India)," the slow-moving, dreamy sounds feel underwater and far away. This ambience is maintained throughout the disc, relieved only slightly by Cuni's more percussive vocals on "Churning of the Ocean". The ethereal quality of the music is mirrored by the artful packaging and exquisite sound reproduction, both typical of Projekt Records, which has been producing high-quality gothic, ambient, and darkwave music for almost 20 years. In many ways similar to Jeff Grienke and Anisa Romero's Hana, this music reveals the affinity between centuries-old Indian singing and modern electronica.

Artist: Alio Die + Antonio Testa
P:  2012
Rêverie is the third collaboration between Antonio Testa and Stefano Musso after ten years from their last cd together "Prayer for the Forest",    with this new potion the duo explore different slow-motion athmospheres, playing a wide range of acoustic instruments,and distilling healing sounds,that naturally relate with music-therapy.
An album for the soul and the love of being in its entirety. Airy and suspended, "Rêverie" is inductive music for light-hearted moods . Over any siege of thought.
The cd comes in a refined 6 panel digipack.

Artist: Alio Die + Dirk Serries (Vidna Obmana)
P:  2022
The chapters of the eclipse is the new musical union of Italy's Alio Die (Stefano Musso) and Belgium's Dirk Serries (vidnaObmana) which, more than twenty years after their previous collaboration contains three compositions in a suspended airy, majestic succession. The meditative and minimalist electronic ambient sky is suspended at the interval for liberation from the shadows of becoming: life in its most essential orientation.

Artist:  Alio Die
P:  2003
It is a very deep and conceptual work, full of esoteric mysteriousness, philosophicsense and acoustic aesthetics. Excellent mastering! New sounding is harmoniously combined with classical passages from Alio Die. Beautiful improvisations with piano and zither mixed with a lot of different sounds and soundscapes. It is not simplymusic, it is like a film, but it is more than a film, much more! It is a flight of fantasy, an unrestrained flight! Most of all it is similar to lucid dream: Visionary landscapes of different cities are changed by pictures from own memory. Events are transforming from one to another but not breaking a mysterious logic of dream.
This immersing inside of itself, wonderful travel to depths of the entity.
And all this gives you a great pleasure and delightful rest to your mind!

Artist:  Alio Die
P:  2004
A Sonic Nightwalk by Alio Die and Francesco Paladino with contributions from Jack or Jive and In Gowan Ring. Angel's Fly Souvenir is an album out of any definition, music at the same time dreamy and deep, a concrete and ethereal journey, born from the pleasure to experiment, the project was starting from acoustic sounds and voices recorded throw a long tube with zither loops, flutes, and different sonorous objects not identified at all and from the 'nose' sounds by Francesco Paladino. The album contains seven tracks, two of that are enriched by the epic collaboration track with In Gowan Ring in 'Ancient Consciousness of the End', and with the voice by Chako of Jack or Jive in 'Flowing Out from the Core of the Mountain' . Francesco Paladino apart from his passion with video art, it's active in music from early seventies and was a member of Doubling Riders. Basic improvisations for Angel's Fly Souvenirwere conceived and performed by Stefano Musso and Francesco Paladino in spring 2002, playing and recording different instruments and objects throw a long tube. Edited and mastered on Pro-Tools at Temple Studio, Milano 2003. Alio Die: drones and loops, zither, tubes.Francesco Paladino: nose sounds, field recordings (recorded in Katmandu, Nepal, South California) various objects. Chako : Voice on track 05. In Gowan Ring : basic sounds of track 06. Voice's sample on track 04 by Maria Assunta Karini.

Artist: Alio Die + Indalaska
P:  2019
LTD 200
A very immersive drones soundscapes in this collaboration album with Maninkari side-project, a persian duo from Paris.
The sound, with a meditative feeling, and indian & medieval arabesques, make this  release very particular and suitable with the Castle Sonorisations series, enhancing the environment by acoustic improvisations and fine intonations.

Artist: Alio Die & James Johnson
P: 2007
This is one long relaxing and meditative track, enriched by multilayered textures from little sounds (rattles, tubes, flutes, etc) played in the wilderness, and field recordings supported by the sophisticated and gentle sounds of electronics and treated viola.  

Artist:  Alio Die + Lingua Fungi
P:  2017
‘Lento’ started with acoustic improvisations made in Finland with Lingua Fungi, in summer 2011, then edited and mixed by Alio Die at Lunae studio in winter 2016. During the sessions the natural atmospheres of wild places have connect and pervaded the music, expanding the elements and inspirations that have characterized "The otter songs”. Lento is an hypnotic journey and flowing experience with more uplifting spiritual overtones. A great listen through and through.

Artist:  Alio Die + Lingua Fungi
P:  2012
Otter Songs is the culmination of the process that began in 2008 by Lingua Fungi and Alio Die. The idea for the collaboration was born from the initial recordings by Jaakko Padatsu utilizing diverse self made instruments and natural objects including driftwood, snail shells and otter skull ocarinas. The archaic and arctic drones were later complemented with subtle recordings by Stefano Musso with zither, sitar and other acoustic instruments. The collaboration was sealed with final recordings in Italian spring 2011 by Jaakko Padatsu and Stefano Musso. From Terra Ultima to Mediterranean, the album brings together the tones of nocturnal cicadae and spring break-up of ice in Bothnian Bay.
Sometimes driven with arctic atavism, sometimes with delicate warm melodies, Otter Songs aims to transcend physical distance by deconstructing and rebuilding the two worlds into boundless celebration of Terra Mater.
The cd comes in a refined 6 panel digipack printed with gold colour.
Artwork by Hic Sunt Leones from original concept and photos by Lingua Fungi.

Artist: Alio Die &  Lorenzo Montana
P: 2023
LTD 500
The third collaborative work from Italian artists Alio Die and Lorenzo Montanà is an electro-acoustic rumination upon the shimmerings of water. The refined electronics perfectly integrate with the sounds of acoustic origin — the magic is enthralling. The sonorities of original ethnic instruments such as the psaltery, the rebab (a low stringed instrument similar to the lute, with resonating strings), and the duduk combine with the understated textures of synths, drones and loops. The eight pieces move through pure ambient streams, almost ancestral, evolving out of time. It’s a fluid, beatless territory that drifts, in the course of seventy minutes, through pure ambient vistas and the call-to-prayer feel of sacredly inspired music.
Alio explains, “The eight musical creations from the deep reaches of the earth push to the sky with extreme mastery and power. The symbiosis of the colors of the soundscapes reflects the extreme specularity of the palette Lorenzo and I each bring to the work as companions of poetry, chasing and blending without stopping among the chasms of the abyss up to the top of the highest mountains. The water cycle traverses every realm of existence. It breathes life into the earth from gaseous regime to flowing fluid to glacial crystal. It’s nature as a vital balm also allows you to absorb the information, the pattern, the rhythm of the material it encounters on its way. It is the place of immersion. The cycle of life but also the cycle of a sensitive identity, so we become continuously. The temple of life is built on the water cycle which expresses and lays the foundations of any biological connection. In the dialogue of the water the light rays are reflected, the colors of the sky and of the green, the perfume after the rain, or after a snowfall, the mists and the rainbows, the dew, the tears.”
The semi-ritual echoes of Dialogue of Water connect within a spectrum of meditation and emotional soundscapes. The boundary is liquid: the perfect translation of a perpetual flow veiled by a surrounding graceful mood.

Artist: Alio Die &  Lorenzo Montana
P: 2019
LTD 500
Alio Die & Lorenzo Montanà - The Threshold of Beauty  CD digi (2019)
On their second collaboration, these cult Italian musicians create an hour of meditative dream-infused soundscapes and beatless mystical textures. Following their 2015 Projekt album Holographic Codex, Alio Die (with 65 releases) and Lorenzo Montanà (with 17 releases) come together for six tracks of deep ambient soundscaping, intersecting a potent alchemical brew of pure organic sounds.
The threshold of beauty is a transcendental vision of beauty as an integral part of the cosmos. The connections of the music with nature and human spirituality are mixed in an ineffable picture that create a contemplative frame of mind.
The recordings started with Alio Die performing on a psaltery (an ancient medieval instrument like a dulcimer but played by plucking the strings) augmented with real time electronic improvisations & processing by Lorenzo. The tracks were then edited by Alio Die adding layers, additional effects and loops to complete the expansive ritualistic tapestry.
Undeniably calming and moving, the breathing slows, the mind quiets and opens. As the introspective ambience washes over the listener, a naturalistic dronescape unfolds with alluring aural scenarios of evolving, intimate sounds.
* Alio Die has over 65 releases, 7 on America’s Projekt Records and others on his own Hic Sunt Leones label. Montanà recorded 5 collaborations with Pete Namlook on Pete’s German FAX label, plus released 12 solo albums with various European imprints.

Artist:  Alio Die
P:  2007
Alio Die works more often than not with collaborators who share his aesthetic sense as well as nationality. In this way, and by giving themequal billing, he and his label Hic Sunt Leones provide an invaluable showcase where the rest of the world can discover a whole slew ofrelatively unknown ambient artists from Italy. It is also interesting, as we watch the mature Alio Die´s career evolve, to see him relegate electronics to the back seat, increasingly choosing instead to generate his drones and soundscapes with acoustic instruments.This album is a cross between a kind of pan-global ethnic sound -all those wind instruments - and an almost sacral, late Medieval feeling - had he been born five hundred years ago, Alio Die would no doubt have composed for the church. Luciano Daini´s cello lends the title track an essential focal point to an otherwise abstract setting that sounds like things quietly falling apart, or gently being pulled apart by angels. Of course the end of any one era means the beginning of another - by the time wer each this point on the album, we´re still only a third of the way through.The next phase of the album is introduced with a whiff of Arabian"Desert´s Breath", which heralds "Il Volo Assunto", featuring the album´s most exquisite textures. While "L´Inequivocabile Quintessenza" rambles too much (ambient improv gone astray), the closing track "Nocturnal Solution" brings us in for a very soft and pleasant landing.

Artist:  Alio Die + Mariolina Zitta
P: 2010
Using selected sound materials from Sonorous stones, Stalactites, Bat calls, Flutes, Field recordings collected by Mariolina Zitta in different caves in Liguria a Sardinia, Italy, processed and edited by Alio Die.  
In "Lithos" the drones are played by the authors on a set of long stones that goes in resonance, caressed by a bathed hand, by the same principle of the crystal's glasses.
A very immersive and obscure traveling, an underground meditation with a ritual touch, in accord with the "natural sound", despite the sampling and multieffect techniques used here.
A deep listening experience.

Artist:  Alio Die + Mathias Grassow
P: 2010
After the concert in Prague last year in may, we followed the proposal of friends to play some acoustic instruments spontaneously on top of the hill, in Troja, into a circle of stones installations.
Zithers, Tubes, Bells, Rattle and Shells, Flutes..the sessions were inspired from the special place and the spring's vibes in the wind. The recordings that are a blueprint of the spirit of that day, were edited in studio by Alio Die, then Mathias Grassow added his electronic drones to expand the point of view and enrich the flow and layers of the compositions. The result in eight tracks, show how mostly static and repetitive balanced sounds can interact with our perception during the listening time, bringing us into an active and intimate quiet mood, softly absorbing us into some dreams-like and time-opening experience.
Hic Sunt Leones nov.2010
"My first time in prague in 2007 was an outstanding event and I was impressed by the magic and history of this town.
Two years later I was invited again as a part of the project "Music & Virtues", which lives on like the magic of prague and the efforts of spiritual healing of the earth from here and many other places on earth.
I ever believed in music as a tool to heal this living organism and what's better than the universal speech of sound and music to be a part of this project ?
Beside the concert in the Church of St. Simon and Juda,Old Town we followed the proposal to play some acoustic instruments spontaneously on top of the hill... These recordings are a blueprint of the spirit there and so we decided to work on it and this is the result.."
Mathias Grassow oct.2010

Artist: Alio Die + Oophoi
P: 2019
LTD 200
This first volume of a trilogy of 'lost and found' tracks contain a unique collaboration piece recorded in the 90' with Oophoi, a track with Xabec, Martina Galvagni, and Maninkari a persian duo from Paris.  Deep and essential vibes combine Alio Die’s sound with some of the more interesting collaboration moments ever, over the years.

Artist:  Alio Die & Parallel Worlds
P:  2010
This is the first collaboration by ambient master Alio Die with soundscape creator Parallel Worlds. The unique sound achieved could be described as a hybrid sonic world, made out of bouncing electrons and air vibrations. The modular machines of Parallel Worlds are merged with the acoustic instrumentation and drones of Alio Die, joined by the ethereal voice of the Polish vocalist/composer India Czajkowska, resulting in a surreal, yet down to earth, listening experience. The compositions, being, at times, minimal and calm and, at other times, full of mystical darkness and microsound elements, take the listener into a place were mental and physical boundaries have no need to exist.
“Parallel Worlds’ music is a combination of dreamy/atmospheric textures with analogue rhythms and sequences. Parallel Worlds use mostly huge Analogue Modulars and Analogue Step Sequencers of the past and present, combined with digital synthesis techniques.
Bakis Sirros has been involved in various sound design projects and is the moderator of the Doepfer A100 modular users group, helping in the progress of the tools for experimental electronic music.
He also participates in some other collaboration projects, the project “Interconnected” with the German musician Ingo Zobel (of DRON, Signalform, Self Oscillate, Datasette, etc.) and the project “Memory Geist” with the Australian electronic musician Steve Law (of Zen Paradox, Starseed Transmission, etc).
Since the late '80s, Stefano Musso has recorded deep, evocative experimental ambient and electro-acoustic soundscapes under the name Alio Die.Combining sweeping electronics with found sound and acoustical treatments, he has assembled a rich and varied collection of recordings for such labels as Projekt, Timebase, Heart of Space / Fathom, and his own Hic Sunt Leones label.
His music is a shadowy, cavernous, intensely detailed fusion of acoustical elements, step-and-repeat sample treatments, sparse, echoing percussion, and deep, atmospheric sound design, playing ambient's static tendencies off of shifting melodic and textural passages that suggest movement without sacrificing the music's vague, entropic formlessness.

 

Artist:  Alio Die & Parallel Worlds
P:  2010
LTD 500
This is the first collaboration by ambient master Alio Die with soundscape creator Parallel Worlds. The unique sound achieved could be described as a hybrid sonic world, made out of bouncing electrons and air vibrations. The modular machines of Parallel Worlds are merged with the acoustic instrumentation and drones of Alio Die, joined by the ethereal voice of the Polish vocalist/composer India Czajkowska, resulting in a surreal, yet down to earth, listening experience. The compositions, being, at times, minimal and calm and, at other times, full of mystical darkness and microsound elements, take the listener into a place were mental and physical boundaries have no need to exist.
“Parallel Worlds’ music is a combination of dreamy/atmospheric textures with analogue rhythms and sequences. Parallel Worlds use mostly huge Analogue Modulars and Analogue Step Sequencers of the past and present, combined with digital synthesis techniques.
Bakis Sirros has been involved in various sound design projects and is the moderator of the Doepfer A100 modular users group, helping in the progress of the tools for experimental electronic music.
He also participates in some other collaboration projects, the project “Interconnected” with the German musician Ingo Zobel (of DRON, Signalform, Self Oscillate, Datasette, etc.) and the project “Memory Geist” with the Australian electronic musician Steve Law (of Zen Paradox, Starseed Transmission, etc).
Since the late '80s, Stefano Musso has recorded deep, evocative experimental ambient and electro-acoustic soundscapes under the name Alio Die.Combining sweeping electronics with found sound and acoustical treatments, he has assembled a rich and varied collection of recordings for such labels as Projekt, Timebase, Heart of Space / Fathom, and his own Hic Sunt Leones label.
His music is a shadowy, cavernous, intensely detailed fusion of acoustical elements, step-and-repeat sample treatments, sparse, echoing percussion, and deep, atmospheric sound design, playing ambient's static tendencies off of shifting melodic and textural passages that suggest movement without sacrificing the music's vague, entropic formlessness.
This is the ltd 500 vinyl version.