Michael Draine's Twisted Vista
Cudu
Waterplay
(Materiali Sonori)
For their third album, this Italian
progressive group has streamlined down to
a core duo of guitarist Paolo Lotti and
bassist/synthesist Lucca Mazzatini, with
guest appearances by Embryo
multi-instrumentalist Christian Burchard,
brass player Luc Van Lieshout, and
reedman/keyboardist Steven Brown of
Tuxedomoon. Lotti has assimilated a wide
range of Robert Fripp’s electric guitar
techniques and deployed them in the
service of highly original,  intoxicating
music written and performed in		Music Review Index
collaboration with these formidable
accompanists.
Lotti’s sonic palette encompasses a
violin-like glissando, splashy, metallic		Twisted Cinema
tone clusters, and shimmering curtains
of abstract sound, all achieved without
the aid of a guitar synthesizer.
Waterplay abounds with unexpected musical
juxtapositions, with Lotti’s legato
guitar winding through Burchard’s
lattices of exotic percussion, playing
against Brown’s smoky nightclub sax or
Van Lieshout’s classical brass. The
album exudes a tropical, hallucinatory
atmosphere, with rippling, heavily
processed guitar blending into the
sounds of seagulls and night creatures.
On the lush, languorous “Sonata Per
Gabbianco” and “Debussy Sur La Mer
Avec Arpege,” Cudu stretch out in
the hypnotic, cyclical mode of
Fripp and Eno’s No Pussyfooting,
but the group’s flair for assertive
rhythmic configurations set them apart
from the obvious antecedent. Oblique,
intricate, and slightly challenging,
Waterplay will delight listeners
tired of the gutless Enoisms of a
generation of new age synthesists.
published in Boston Rock #132, June 1993
http://www.materialisonori.it/