Giulio Aldinucci’s ‘Materia’ Works by Subtraction

On Materia, Giulio Aldinucci turns the album’s title—Italian for “matter”—into a working method. The record is built by removing excess from dense sound masses, leaving only what each piece needs to hold. That restraint gives the album a distinct tension: textures feel present but never ornamental.

The opening track, “Not Here,” carries the most articulated material. Rather than saving that energy for a climax, Aldinucci places it first. It sets out the record’s central friction between accumulation and subtraction, with harmonics shifting between warm and cold and a slow melodic contour emerging from distorted drones. What follows becomes a study in reduction.

“In A Shadow of Noise” pulls back further. Low frequencies gain body without turning oppressive, and rough edges start to behave as harmonic elements rather than interference. The emotional centre arrives with the paired “Cenere e Onde Lontane” and “Come Luce, In Sogno,” where distant, unfixed voices introduce a human presence. These fragments of vocalisation reorient the harmonic field, making it feel lighter and more vertical without breaking the album’s restraint.

From there, “Never” returns to a darker, granular texture built on a low hum, and the closer “Sera” lets the material settle into softened harmonics and a quiet melancholy. No final statement arrives, only the sense that the matter has been shaped, not finished.