upsammy & Valentina Magaletti – Seismo
Read Time: 4 mins
The best collaborations tend to be the most unexpected. The ones with a real sense of contrast, friction, and resolve, and upsammy & Valentina Magaletti’s Seismo, for me, is undoubtedly one of those. It is, of course, no surprise to see drum alchemist, formidable solo artist, and serial collaborator Valentina Magaletti colluding with an artist, having lent her considerable talents to a seemingly endless list of projects, including her work with Nídia, Holy Tongue, Moin, Tomaga, Vanishing Twin, and many more.
upsammy, however, has always seemed a more hermetic artist. Her IDM-tinged hypermelodic sound has long ploughed its own furrow. Instantly recognisable, her power is the creation of music that is intentional, MIDI-centric, yet somehow natural-sounding and full of emotion, a feat that only a handful of artists have ever managed (see Boards of Canada, Kraftwerk, Cluster). This is not a path of collaborative effort, but of singular world-building, and although I’m a huge fan of both artists’ work, I have to confess I was concerned that any collaboration risked obscuring either upsammy’s sound or the raw improvisation that is at the core of Magaletti’s work.
However, I’m happy to report that I was wrong. Terribly wrong. On Seismo, neither artist is rendered obscure; their powers combine Voltron-like to create a remarkable album that runs the gamut of modern electronic music, showcasing the restraint and design of upsammy’s soundworld and the playful jazz-rooted brilliance of Magaletti.
The wryly titled opening track, It Comes to an End, does a great job of introducing the journey ahead. First, we hear the distant snares, cymbals, and floor toms of Magaletti’s kit, haunted Jazz, a cosmic storm approaching before cutting into an immaculate music-box like sequence that has become a signature sound of upsammy. This combination of dark and light gives the music a totally new edge, as the organic percussion collides, surrounds, and complements the clinical yet pitch-bent MIDI elements. It’s cute and unhinged in equal measure.
Tracks like Hyperlocalize and Collide create a darker, ominous feel, twitching with nervous energy. The former is like the sound of a dial-up modem playing Jazz, its three-note piano leitmotif looming phantom-like over the fractured minimalist cadences of blips, toms, cropped vocal samples, and panning drums. The latter swaps the piano for bell whispers as the percussion becomes more frantic, more feral.
Mementoes– possibly my favourite track – balances upsammy’s go-slow arpeggios and microtextures with strange warped vocal edits, minimalist drum elements, chirps, and what sounds like a vibraphone. The melody is so heartbreaking, and the rhythmic elements so scattered and playful, that I teared up while listening to it. Serotonin depletion is a wonderful thing.
Seismo closes in a smoky, melancholic haze, in the form of Some Unimaginable World, where textural tape-saturated pads float around a circular rhythmic base and pitched-down vocal flourishes which waft in and out like an unintelligible farewell, lost in the mist.
_ Valentina Magaletti & upsammy
A little while ago, my partner cooked Albaloo Polo (Persian Sour Cherry Rice) for me. I won’t lie, I was sceptical at first. Though I’m a huge fan of cherries, I didn’t want them anywhere near my rice. But the sweet-sour taste of the cherries, butting up against the other flavours, blew my tiny provincial mind. Now it’s all I can think about. Similarly, Seismo sees a coming together of two very different energies, which I was equally mistrusting of. But the restrained, detail-oriented sound of upsammy combines beautifully with the strange, fractured beauty of Magaletti’s work, and all I can do is hope for another plate.
Seismo is out now on PAN.