Spirit Evocation

Spirit Evocation #2 - 2024

Spirit Evocation is an ongoing project that investigates  some of Russolo’s most esoteric beliefs and research. It takes place in Laveno-Momello, Italy where Russolo is buried and exploresRussolo’s use of noise to attempt to communicate with the spirit world as a starting point to communicate with Russolo himself! 

Russolo believed ‘raw’ noise could be transformed through his Intonarumori where the surrounding air was swept up and channelled through the various levers, cranks and motors that formed the instruments engines to produce what he called ‘spiritualised’ noise. This was a cyclic process between the musicians and the noise; with the spiritualised noise inspiring the musicians to continue until a trance like environment was created - a place where the spirits could enter the room and communicate with the players and vice versa. I envision Russolo’s performances as sonic seances - events somewhere between that of a clairvoyant speaking in ancient tongues trying to conjure the dead and a mass ritual where crowds chant and perform ceremonies to awaken the spirits. 

Spirit Evocation first started during a research trip to Italy in July 2019 when I sat at Russolo’s graveside with the aim of communicating with the spirit world using noise. (The work was revisited in 2024 following the same ritual as described below up with updated musical offerings for Russolo to ‘hear’. I plan part 3 sometime in 2026 or 2027)

 I couldn’t bring my Intonarumori to perform some kind of occult ritual in a public cemetery so I investigated ways a conversation could manifest using the esoteric practices that the Futurists explored. It started by playing Russolo a series of noise pieces I composed for him. These included works for Intonarumori, works composed using the urban noises recorded outside his Milano studio and from his childhood home in Portogruaro. I saw this as my ‘calling’ to the spirit of Russolo in much the same way as a medium may try to evoke spirits through chanting or song. I then recorded the noise surrounding his graveside. 

For Russolo the key to spiritualising noise was mediation - the alchemical work of transforming the base into something higher. So as Russolo mediated noise with his Intonarumori I mediated the noise of the captured sound from his grave via a self-devised system of occult number theory. This methodology was developed from experimentation and research into esoteric practices that focused on decoding raw information to reveal deeper layers of meaning. In particular I drew upon Pythagorean philosophy as Pythagoras was both a source of inspiration and angst for the Futurists. As the founder of Western music theory and the first person to discover the mathematical relationship between the vibration of a noise and its pitch Pythagoras both connected the worlds of music and science and simultaneously created boundaries that restricted music’s possibilities for centuries. For Pythagoras the language of the universe was numerical. 

Pythagorean Numerology in the modern age is dismissed as nothing more than a pseudo-science but its influence on the mystic arts, the occult and even religious philosophy is without doubt. The assigning of numbers to letters is an occult method of harnessing and channelling the energy and vibrations of language into its essence, in turn revealing a distilled truth. There are clear parallels with alchemy here as well as the concept of spiritualisation via mediation. 

The number theory provided me with a set of instructions to mediate the raw noise of the field recording resulting in what I describe as a poetic imagining of Russolo’s response to my ‘calling’. The act of removing myself from any decision making in the process and outcome of the piece altered my role from that of a creator to that of a vessel or medium. 

The resulting piece is very different to any sound work I have previously produced that utilised durational, atmospheric and pitch manipulation. These mixing techniques usually result in a work containing a cold haunted atmosphere with elongated sounds, twisted harmonics and odd overtones. This piece has a more human quality to it, rather than electronic it sounds organic. It has harmony and a tonal centre. It felt spiritual and it felt like communication. 

The sound work is accompanied by a video piece filmed at that the Chiesa di S. Maria where the Laveno-Mombello cemetery is located.

2024 update

In September 2024 I returned to Russolo’s graveside to make part 2 of this work. The music I brought this time was my 2020 piece La morte mi troverà vivo which contained the original Spirit Evocation. The playing of this 90 minute piece  amplified the idea of the cyclic ritual so important to Russolo’s experiments via repeating past sounds (constructed using the ritual in 2019) to help create a new ritual and work. After the music had finished I recorded Russolo’s grave for 90 minutes and this raw material was mixed according to the numbers that numerology gave me based on Russolo’s name, the date of the recording, and the place and time of the recording. The piece this time was subtler than in 2019, it stayed brooding with occasional new timbres sweeping in and slowly fading away. It had less of a discernible tonal/pitch centre (an element that surprised me in 2019) and more of a drone like quality. I look forward to returning and seeing what mood Russolo is in and what he may have to say in the future.