Atoloi - Inflorescenze (2021)

Sure Thing’s third release, Inflorescenze, comes from Milano-based artist Atoloi. He’s offered the label a meditative work that reflects upon the tension that arises from polarity: nature and the city-bound sphere of clubbing, weight and levity, the internal world of the artist and his external environment. Inflorescenze moves like a living, breathing organism, or like one undifferentiated process: a circuit with no end and no beginning.

The sequence of the tracks—and the arrangements themselves—suggest a logical flow: mood and texture gradually intensify through a process of natural unfolding and flourishing. The ambient “Fioritura”—a space-setting arrangement replete with buzzing drone and subdued melody—prepares the mind for what’s to come. “Felce,” then, ushers in a journey of rhythm. It begins simple enough: a hand drum over reverberating synth that lingers in the backdrop like mist. Another rhythm, and another, enters, leading only to a deeper hypnosis. These polyrhythms touch the primordial mind. “Umida Superficie” and “Forma e Cammino” only add potency to the rhythmic environment. Even tracks for the club sphere aren’t disconnected from the work’s conceptual purview; they remain situated within it, catalyzing the deepest state of immersion yet. As the release slows and re-enters the ambient sphere with the spacious, ethereal “Sulle Sensazioni” and the chiming bells of “Chiusura,” we sense we’ve reached the final stretch. Undoubtedly, though, Atoloi’s world will resonate long after we’ve left it.