Drone Records

PUPILLO, MASSIMO - Our Forgotten Ancestors

Format: CD

Label & Cat.Number: Glacial Movements GM 052

Release Year: 2023

Note: the prolific founding member of ZU (known also as composer and improsiver with countless other artsits) with a synth-driven, melancholic ambient solo album, apparently influenced by or as an homage to indigene cultures living in the coldest regions of the globe.... - lim. 300, 8 panel gloss-spot on front and back

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €16.00

More Info

Massimo Pupillo is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, mostly known for being a founding members of ZU, with whom he released 18 albums and played more than 2000 shows around the world. He has also kept a very open and multidisciplinary approach that led him to work with some of the most acclaimed figures in today's world of arts: Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Guidi (of legendary avantgarde theatre group Societas Raffaello Sanzio), american choreographer Meg Stuart, french opera star Marie-Agnes Gillot, contemporary dance group Dewey Dell, world reknown dancer Yaman Okur, etc.
He has collaborated live and on record with avant-garde musicians and composers such as Alvin Curran ( founder of Musica Elettronica Viva in 1966), with world-famous piano duo of Katia & Marielle Labeque, with classical music virtuosos such as Viktoria Mullova and Giovanni Sollima. He has also recorded with Canadian soprano and orchestra conductor, Barbara Hannigan. Working with Katia Labeque he has had the huge honour of an album artwork designed by Storm Thorgerson, founder of Hipgnosis, probably one of the most important designers in music. With Katia Labeque, he has played and arranged tracks of an album of Moondog music that was released on the most important classical label ever, Deutsche Grammophon. Also with Katia Labeque he presented a special project at Paris' Philharmonie in 2016, working, between others, with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Bryce and Aaron Dessner (The National). In the world of electric/ rock music he has collaborated with some of the most important names in the international scene, such as Mike Patton ( Faith No More), Stephen O' Malley ( Sunn O)) ,Thurston Moore, Jim O' Rourke (Sonic Youth), Guy Picciotto & Joe Lally (Fugazi), FM Einheit ( Einstürzende Neubauten) , Buzz Osbourne (Melvins) Damo Suzuki (CAN), etc. In free-improvised music he worked with Peter Brotzmann, Toshinori Kondo,Tony Buck ( The Necks) etc..
In the experimental music scene he has collaborated with Oren Ambarchi, David Tibet (Current 93), Thighpaulsandra (Coil), Christina Vantzou, Daniel O'Sullivan, Andrea Belfi, Abul Mogard,, Mick Harris (Scorn), Gordon Sharp (This Mortal Coil & Cindytalk) etc...
Between ZU, solo work and collaborations, he released more than 80 albums and played more than 3000 shows all over the world. As in 2022 he just recorded a collaboration with world famous iconic actor Malcolm McDowell called "Songs Of Stone" that will be released in september on italian label Subsound Records, and is currently working on a sound installation with Roger Ballen, one of the most influential and important photographic artists of the 21st century.

We know it
engraved in our cells
The origin
To feel the primordial song
We need to have
A childish interest
For the universe
Living In a hint of islands
Far and true
Atlantic and remote ones
A hint, that's enough
To find each other
Where time didn't exist
When there was only space
When there were mountains and seas and sky
And unnamed creatures
With roots like plants
Who extracted new forms of language from the force
To make the passage on earth more tender
To find a song that could ease the burden of love
Of this multiform creature that welcomed us
To expand ourselves like jellyfish
And make distance accessible to us
Making a continuous motion
Transforming this perpetual vibrating into our fusion
Since the origin
In a silence
Made sound
And then meat
Swimming on seabeds of ice and fire
A language that dances the dew of dawn
And sings the hidden streams
An origin where we find our ancestors
Timeless faces
Who breathe the depths of the sea and move the mystery
Meet them everywhere
For those with eyes to see
And ears to hear
Lived in the handed-down word
And in the tolling of the sky, that we call hail
On the journey back
Your hand is shaken
And your conscience accompanied
In crowds so endless
And inhabited
By a primordial solitude
Where our home will be a fire of inaccessible glaciers
In the stillness of a love that expands in a restless cosmos
With that hint still clinging
Of distant and real islands
From which the primordial song comes

Recorded and mixed by Massimo at Theresa House 2021/23
Beautifully mastered by Lorenzo Stecconi at Triple Sun 2023. Sleeve design by Rutger Zuydervelt

Front cover photo by Fridtjof Nansen
An Inuit woman with child on her back, Gronlandshavet, Kap Seen Bille
Taken during Fridtjof Nansen's expedition to Greenland, July 1888 - May 1889

https://glacialmovements.bandcamp.com/album/our-forgotten-ancestors