"Paint as you like and die happy."
(Henry Miller)
Hallo, this Label is run by Tommaso Rolando.
i am a contrabass player and improviser from Genova, Italy.
Torto Editions is a platform for lot of my projects and such for other artists.
All the music on this label has a spiritual and an intellectual root in an exploratory approach, a deep research and transparent relation to sound and space.
So, please listen.
Thank you.
Cloud Canyons new album "Dreaming of Horses Running in Circles" is out, support and buy the Cassette on the Bandcamp page!
"Dreaming Of Horses Running In Circles" is the first full length album by Cloud Canyons, a collaborative effort between Laura Storchi, Michelle Cristofori, Stella Baraldi and Nicola Caleffi.
Originally conceived as instrumental pieces built by Nicola Caleffi (Julie’s Haircut, Muni, Sun Forest) upon multiple layers of analog synthesizers and digital beats, these four long tracks finally blossomed into full songs thanks to the lyrical and vocal contribution of Laura Storchi (a founding member of Julie’s Haircut and Muni), Michelle Cristofori (Circe, Micromouse, She's Gone) and Stella Baraldi (Stella, Baffodoro), three musicians, songwriters and singers who also share a common militancy within the Italian radical feminist collective Mâtilde.
From the slow building pace of the cosmic soul of "Oxen Of The Sun" to the psychedelic landscape of "Secret Knowledge", through the mutant-disco wave of "Empire Of The Flesh" and the collective hymn of the motorik-driven "Under Neon Stars", the album’s four tracks resonate with Cloud Canyons’ unique aesthetic approach, with Caleffi’s hypnotic and minimal sonic textures enriched by Storchi, Cristofori and Baraldi’s words and vocals - each one with her own distinct individuality, at time transformative, surrealistic and inward-looking, yet always heartfelt and passionate.
Stylistically ranging from krautrock to psychedelia, from house to dub, and lyrically providing a dreamlike, multi-faced insight of the Self - with themes concerning the relationship between the sacred and the mundane, meditation and sensualism, intimacy and nature - the experimental electronica of "Dreaming Of Horses Running In Circles" is the result of the meeting of four personalities - a vital encounter of the Feminine and the Masculine, unleashing the power of the androgynous unconscious.
Mastered and Cut by Anne Taegert at Dubplates & Mastering. Pressed by intakt! A big thank you to Marie Denis, courtesy of Galerie Alberta Pane, for the great artwork photos!
Tape by Torto Editions 2024
Gianmaria Aprile new album "Losing your bearings in the middle of the day" preorder is out, support and buy the Cd on the Bandcamp page!
A genuine diary of simple music elements, a minimalistic painting, but then you drop the paint can. Colors start to melt and shapes lose their boundaries, you fight to maintain focus on a single element but your eyes (ears) have lost their bearings.
Beginnings that seem to end, loops that open up to make room for new inner paths.
Sounds that resurface in a sonic illusion.
"Losing your bearings in the middle of the day" is 40’ suite that was played with a sense of bewilderment, letting the same sound material get lost as far as the mind is following its own disclosures.
The music is continuous, we are the ones who move away.
released November 22, 2023
Gianmaria Aprile: guitars, effects
recorded, mixed and mastered
at Argolab in january 2022 by GmA
xylography on cover by GmA - www.sentimentoinatteso.it -
François Wong & Davide Barbarino new album "Genius Loci" preorder is out, support and buy the Cd on the Bandcamp page!
Here we have two saxophone masters questioning space through sound and movement, and working in the most inspirational place.
"Locus"
Puget-ville is a small village in the south France countryside, among vineyards and woods. It's the also the place where Barre Phillips spent the most part of his life.
And It's the place where the Cepi organization led by him and some brave comrades was born and organized lot of meetings on the topic of mutlidisciplinary improvisation.
Torto Editions has a strong bondage with this incredible reality, as it's proved with the Cepi Nomads record in its catalogue.
tortoeditions.bandcamp.com/album/cepi-meets-hic-feat-barre-phillips
"Genius Loci is an alternation of sound spaces coordinated by time and desire for deep connection in a shared duration. Practical spirituality without doctrine, geo-anarchist and rebellious. Meta-balance between subdued and submerged dialogue. Non-illusory hermitage with telepathic coordination. Sonic explorations by means of bio-rhythmic figurations. Harmonic explosions of melodic landscapes. The blossoming of meaning in the middle of sound."
Davide Barbarino
St.ride new album "Quasi Vicino" preorder is out, support and buy the Cd on the Bandcamp page!
released September 30, 2023
St.ride:
Edo Grandi
Maurizio Gusmerini
Mixed and mastered by Edo Grandi
Photos by Maurizio Gusmerini
Maurizio and Edo confirm their long time presence in Genoa's underground scene, pushing their exploration across boundaries: they're more than a band, considering the incredibly long, prolific and weird creativity characterizing St.ride aesthetics.
This new artifact is more comforting and welcoming than their previous ones, but still keeping that tension and unbalance we expect.
It's a free ride, with open mind and no maps to refer to.
Subtle voices, square waves, plucked strings, open space travel with a clear disillusion on humankind's fate.
A step across the border.
PERFORTO new album "Uragano" is out, support and buy the Cd on the Bandcamp page!
https://perforto.bandcamp.com/album/uragano
released June 20, 2023
Ramble and Torto Editions (Italy) are thrilled to be co- leasing Uragano by PERFORTO - a string duo for electric guitar and grand prepared piano (wood, metal, paper and other materials).
The Polish duo explores improvisation through pitch, timbre, intensity and its consequences over time searching for a specific sensitivity sonoristic in the chaotic dimension of the environment - intensively, delicately, penetratingly, subtly, radically!
Ola Rzepka - percussionist, pianist, composer, performer. A graduate of the Rhythmics specialisation at the Academy of Music in Academy of Music in Katowice at the Faculty of Composition, Interpretation, Education and Jazz and a scholarship holder of the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen (piano and percussion class).
She teaches piano improvisation at the Secondary Music School in Katowice, she also conducts author's music lessons and workshops. She has performed at most festivals of avant-garde music, improvised, contemporary, pop and jazz music festivals in Poland, such as: Ad Libitum, Ars Cameralis, Ars Independent, Inne Brzmienia, Jazz Jantar, Meskie Granie, Off Festival, Opener, Woodstock Festival. As an artist, she has cooperated with the National Audiovisual Audiovisual Institute, the Polish Institute in Vienna, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. She has performed with her own repertoire in Germany, Austria and Turkey. As a composer, she collaborates with renowned artists and theatres.
Łukasz Marciniak - is a guitarist, composer, and co-founder of Brzoska Kolektyw - musical experiment - searching for a place for the consonance of words and sounds in the most optimal formula for them. Currently, he also works in the trio_io ensemble playing contemporary chamber music, and El topo trio - exploring the intricacies of strings and the risk of percussion. Author of music for films and performances. In solo activities, he works on his own language of articulation.
IZTOK KOREN new album "Praznina / Emptiness" is out, support and buy the Cd on the Bandcamp page!
Emptiness is the second solo record by multi-instrumentalist Iztok Koren, a member of the bands Širom, Škm banda and Hexenbrutal.
A result of an outpouring of pent-up creative energy, the album came about after a last-minute force majeure cancellation of a Širom trip to Sarajevo, where the band was to make music for the theatre show Bordel Eden by director Mirjana Medojević. The musician decided to channel his blocked creative flow into new solo material and ended up recording Emptiness in a single day, 7 May 2022, at a secluded hut in the hills of the Zasavje region. The music from Emptiness was eventually used in Bordel Eden.
In addition to the mentioned venting, Iztok’s explorations on the album address the issue of oversaturation, personal moral dilemmas, internal conflicts and the search for a way out of them, overload problems and the urge to introduce changes that cannot happen unless space is secured first – i.e. unless harmful elements are removed and a state of emptiness is created. Emptiness is a necessary condition to stop the damage, to reconnect with oneself, to be cleansed and make a sober ethical assessment of one's actions, to take responsibility for one's actions, to find out who and what you really belong to and how to steer your life in the right direction.
The record is being sent out into the world with the intention of having the music created in that period live an independent second life and become detached from the author’s personal circumstances at the time. Art should be part of the commons.
All the tracks on the record were performed by Iztok Koren without overdubs, using a banjo, a three-string banjo, a guembri, electric guitar, modular synthesizer, effects pedals, contact microphones, percussion, a steel drum and a balafon.
The cover artwork was created by Klara Vrtačnik and the album designed by Tommaso Rolando.
Mixing and mastering by Dejan Lapanja.
Emptiness will be released on 1 April 2023 with the Italian label Torto Editions, which previously released Koren's debut album Lonely Hymns and Pillars of Emptiness and a vinyl version of the debut record by the band Širom.
All songs performed by
Iztok Koren on
banjo, tree string banjo, gembri, electric guitar, modular synth, effect pedals, contact mics, percussions, steel drum and balafon
Artwork: Klara Vrtačnik
Design: Tommaso Rolando
Recording: Iztok Koren
Mix and mastering: Dejan Lapanja
All compositions by Iztok Koren
Recorded without overdubbing in remote cabin in Slovenian hills on 7th may 2022
Torto Editions 2023
MATTEO UGGERI & CRICKET ON THE RADIO
new album "All the WAy Down" is out, support and buy the Cd on the Bandcamp page!
"Snapshots, pictures, glimpses of life and notes on a crumpled sheet.
Framing memories to keep them, mostly remembering those that are less important. Unconscious moments, instants that didn't have attention that unexpectedly resurface in a recurring dream.
Some faces transfigure, other images lose definition, leave the frame for a few seconds and lean on a desk covered with notes and drafts.
Matteo and Stefano offer a really personal and felt contribution to Torto Editions and Ramble Records catalogue; guitar picking gentleness and inspiring field recordings are a magic and transcendental recipe, a nest for those wandering souls that need some rest and comfort."
This album is the result of a collaboration between long-time friends Stefano Santabarbara (aka My Dear Killer, from now on Cricket on the Radio) and Matteo Uggeri (member of Starlight Assembly, Open to the Sea and Sparkle in Grey).
It’s mostly built on the weird melodies of MDK acoustic guitar and Uggeri’s samples and field recordings, along with noisy textures provided by MDK as well, on electric guitar, and other collaborators, such as Andrea Serrapiglio at the cello and Alessandro Sesana at the trumpet.
The result is a deep voyage into a never-gloomy-enough abyss of weird cinematic atmospheres.
Matteo Uggeri:
samples, noises,
Ubunoir synths, effects.
Cricket On the Radio:
acoustic guitar and feedbacks
With Alessandro Sesana on trumpet
and Andrea Serrapiglio on cello.
Mixed by Matteo Uggeri.
Mastered at Mafarka Box,
Phots by Simone Nanetti of Ascosi Lasciti.
Artwork by Matteo Uggeri.
Relased by Torto on March 1st 2023.
TRÓNCO new album "S/t" is out, support and buy the Cd on the Bandcamp page!
https://troncotroncotroncotronco.bandcamp.com/album/s-t?label=3596508191&tab=music
released November 30, 2022
Performed by:
Davide Cedolin – banjo, acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, farfisa organ, percussion, voice
Laurent Charles – tenor and soprano saxophones
Tito Ghiglione – bouzuky, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, clarinet, percussion, voice
Carlos Lalvay Estrada – wood box, noises, voice
Deniz Ozdogan – voice, percussion
Tommaso Rolando – contrabass, synthesizers, glockenspiel, kick drum, sampler, voice
Aleph Viola – cello, electric guitar, percussion, voice
Recorded by Emi Cioncoloni at El Fish Sound Factory in 2020.
Mixed by Tommaso Rolando at Studio Torto - Genova.
Mastered by Domiziano Maselli at Greenhouse Studio - Reykjavik.
Artwork by Carlos Lalvay Estrada.
This is the first full-length by the genovese based experimental collective TRÓNCO.
Originally live recorded in studio during the summer of 2020,
the album has been mixed by Tommaso Rolando and mastered by Domiziano Maselli.
It’s a collection of seven pieces that are somehow a multidimensional expansion of the same seed, placed in the ground in an ageless period:
a trans-genre and trans-geographic recklessness growth by a wild resonance moving through the body as a spiraloid arrow.
It’s a mutual travel in time and space without moving, a vibrations release generating an unknown landscape, where details slowly skid to a redefinition, as in a very slow sundown where the down fading light constantly changes the visual paradigms of the picture.
The sound patterns are eclectic, including various types of strings, wind instruments, percussion, lexical and non lexical vocals and some electronics.
The thick texture of the arrangements gives a natural and dynamic vibe to the tracks, underlining the convergence of all the energies to generate “an autonomous entity” that elegantly drifts between acoustic orchestrations, multiple voices tangling together, low frequencies synthesizers and indefinable ambient incursions.
Check Bandcamp for the complete catalogue!!
Torto Editions is interested in improvisation, experimentation, instant composition, songwriting and unorthodox approaches.
Drop us a line here:
tortoeditions [at] gmail.com