Friday , March 29 2024

Music Review: Matteo Liberatore – ‘Solos’

Growing up in Abruzzo, Italy, guitarist Matteo Liberatore called the Adriatic Sea his backyard. Now a resident of Brooklyn, New York, Liberatore once again can call a body of water his backyard. Though Liberatore gravitates to land close to the sea, his music moves like a complex maze through a never-ending field. The abstract patterns in his music on his release Solos are a product of his mind. Instruments (mainly his acoustic guitar) scrap, pluck, moan, and shimmer intermittently. The journey takes the listener into the subterranean levels of the mind.

The eerie soundscapes of “Barrea” have a bestial rasp, and the strums of Liberatore’s acoustic guitar along “Alberto” are erratic, plotted sporadically. “Ubiquitous” is a labyrinth of discordant sounds, resembling a sci-fi expedition. Intensifying the subterranean levels explored on the recording are the scraping streaks across “MMXVI.” It is easy to feel lost in the maze of capricious shapes.

Liberatore pushes the boundaries of guitar-driven compositions. His avant-garde style is steeped in improvisation. Predominantly dark in tone, Liberatore’s music leans toward making abstract figures. It’s a side of his personality that he discovered while studying classical guitar under Maestro Marco Salcito at Conservatorio di Foggia and philosophy at University of L’Aquila. At New York University, Mr. Liberatore obtained a Masters in Jazz Performance under the tutelage of Jean-Michael Pilc, Wayne Krantz, and Peter Bernstein.

Liberatore’s first album, Concepts, was appropriately named after the conceptual leanings of his music. This new effort delves deeper into the subconscious mind. His sound and performance is abstract and dissonant. What Giorgio De Chirico is to modern art, Matteo Liberatore is to modern avant-garde.

 

About susanfrancesny

Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in eastern Long Island.

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