Massimo De Mattia - Skin (2015)

After almost 25 years of activity and at least 15 albums as leader or as co–leader, Massimo De Mattia seems to want to take stock of the state of his musical research with «Skin», second album published by Caligola Records, showing all the different angles of a multifaceted but always coherent expressive language. A picture that, in order to appear quite comprehensive, needed a double compact–disc, the first in the career for the Friulian flutist but also for our label, in over twenty years and 200 titles. Recorded in six months, in public spaces (but without an audience) or in the musicians’ homes, the album is divided into eight frames, with groups that change in each recording session, ranging from solo to quartet (but the trio and the duo are the most utilized). In this fascinating and challenging adventure, De Mattia is assisted by partners who are in confidence with him – and could not be otherwise – musicians (and friends) from the Triveneto area, with whom had already shared important moments in his artistic career. All this results in over two hours of music that – we mention in this regard the fine liner notes of another friend, Flavio Massarutto – “are stating, in their relentless determination, a thought which is totally adherent to the practice of the improvisation or rather the instant composition, to dispel possible misunderstandings“. The results of such hard work should be enjoyed with patience and attention: the eight movements in what looks like a sort of one long suite can be listened to separately, in different moments; in fact, in some cases, returning on them becomes almost indispensable, in order to appreciate the subtle shades and the authenticity that allows Massimo De Mattia to really expose himself, without using easy shortcuts or safety nets, even in the most difficult passages. His wandering between the hills of Eastern Veneto and Friulian villages, along the banks of the Tagliamento river and in the Isonzo region, where “Italy fades in Central Europe”, in search of an artistic meeting that can become a fruitful creative dialogue, is accompanied in the booklet by a beautiful photographic tale of a journey in India, made in 2012 by his friend Luca D’Agostino. The photos could seem apparently off the subject, but they confirm that the distances in time and space are often huge and insurmountable only to our thinking, not so instead to our soul.