We have met Lea Bertucci on several occasions: champion of the new New York experimental frontier, the composer and multi-instrumentalist has forged some of the most representative gems of the new avant-garde, such as the study on the acoustic environment of “Of Shadow And Substance”, the blurred drone of “Axis/Atlas” or even the resonant sound art of “Acoustic Shadows”, an installation work that perhaps more than anyone else has consecrated the interdisciplinary artist among critics and the public.
2025 marks the return with a new solo album, a six-track where the search for the contemporary finds an anchor in the catharsis of folkloristic flutes contrasted with crackles and nature recording (“Oracular Chasm”), and in spoken word and whispers that dissolve into the slowness of the chords (“The Place Where The Sky Was Born”).
With “The Oracle”, the intention seems to be to merge archaic and ritual imagery with contemporary divinatory practices, letting the voice, more than in previous creations, find its home, deformed by mirrors of delay and transpositions of tonality, accompanied at the same time by mythological wind instruments (la title track). The leap in quality, perhaps, lies in a sound design more organic, where the acousmatic element conquers a new dimension in a post-minimalism which, despite delving into the unconscious and stratifying itself in timbral disintegrations, appears more accessible than previous albums (“Sister Of Sleep”).
The strength, here, is not only in combining a mystical echo of forgotten eras, but also in a changing writing, full of secret details. It is as if certain experiments by Luciano Berio and Cathy Berberian had been disclosed in a drone and minimalist universe, even percussive in its tribalisms of remote alchemy (“In This Time”).
Whether it is a temporary detour or the beginning of a new horizon, all that remains is to abandon yourself to this surrealist sea.
23/10/2025
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
