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Second collaborative work
CROMO [piano & drones] Bruno Sanfilippo + Mathias Grassow.

For this work of art, Mr Sanfilippo and Mr Grassow have teamed up a second time, together creating a smooth and quiet sonic soundscape to follow-up their critically acclaimed “Ambessence”. The six “chapters” on “Cromo” offer 62 minutes of intimate soundings which sees a precise interplay of Bruno’s Old Lady Grand Piano and Mathias vast, transparent and fluid drone tapestries. The outcome is delicate, sensitive, glacial and hypnotizing, a slow drift with a soothing, mesmerizing effect. My personal highlights are the vast spaces explored on the third and fifth installment, which both reach out to a grand design of things.

Yes, “Cromo” once more truely illustrates the label’s vision that instrumental music can lead the soul into a state of sacred intimacy. Chapeau, Mathias and Bruno.

Next to digital download formats from MusicZeit, the album is also available as factory-pressed cd from the label.
Bert Strolenberg [sonicimmersion.org]


STYLE: Delicate Steinway Old Lady Grand Piano impressions and subtle, air-filled drones. Mathias Grassow lays down a series of gossamer drone textures reminiscent of distant fogs - hazy, grey beds of transparent tone with shifting densities that seep into the consciousness softening the atmosphere, drenching the soundscape. These electronic formations at times recede and hang in the background allowing Bruno Sanfilippo's piano work to dominate, but in other places they well up and fill the senses becoming dense, intense, engrossing. The piano parts are achingly beautiful and melodic on some tracks - sparse, unhurried developments that seem to pour straight from the heart of the player.
There are also darker passages of finger runs looming from the relative stillness of the synths. Sometimes the ivories sink deep within the mists, reverberating gently, becoming a part of the air or are so heavily effected as to merge with the backdrop.

ARTWORK: CROMO is a jewel case presentation with a fold-out insert. Cover art is all comprised of soft shades of grey with abstract light patterns arcing and streaking the surface. The front cover holds a central image between broad bands of grey and simple titles. On the back the tracks are listed against respective times. The sleeve insert opens out to reveal a page of credits and a gear list for both Grassow and Sanfilippo. Here too are web site details and contact information.
The innermost double page spread is given over to a glassy abstraction in grey with the legend CROMO = Cr as the only text.

OVERALL: CROMO [piano & drones] is the latest collaboration from Bruno Sanfilippo and Mathias Grassow released via Bruno's own Ad21music label. The album follows up the highly respected Ambessence: Piano and Drones album of 2008 (also reviewed at Morpheus Music). This current work delivers six mesmerising compositions ranging in length from just over seven minutes to the powerful nineteen minute nineteen second conclusion - sixty two minutes in total. The melancholy grace of the first release is once again present but this time there is a darker tone tugging at the music a dramatic sense of anticipation
by Paul Jury - Morpheus Music - U.K.