ZOE PIA & MATS GUSTAFSSON
RITE
ZOE PIA launeddas, Bb clarinet, percussion, electronics
MATS GUSTAFSSON flute, slide flute, tenor sax,
Ab clarinet, fluteophone, harmonica
1 . I SHUT MY EYES LIKE A LOCK. 9’56’’
2 . A THOUSAND BIRD CALLS 9’26’’
3 . MINIMA. MEMORY. MIRAGE 21'54’’
It’s not dark/It’s only darkish
Sharon Van Etten, “Darkish”
When Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, and Theodore Bowen titled their LP Folk Music (Trans Museq, 1978), they didn’t mean to suggest that it sounded like Pete Seeger or Joan Baez. Theirs was a whole other kind of “folk,” a music of people rather than of the people.
Personal music, with a piece dedicated to Tristan Tzara and a whole lot of what was once called “front porch improvising.” It’s intimate in detail. Scritchy scratchy music, biting bugs on the leg. But in scope it’s expansive. Players listen to each other and resist following the leader. They see what they can do when they join forces. If I do this and you do that, what does it sound like together? And they embrace their regionality – rather than being invested in pretending at the universal, this is Alabama improvised music, proud and plentiful.
The three musicians passed noisy little ideas around like a tray of bbq at a cookout.
There is an approach to folk music that adopts a different concept of traditional. Let’s agree that traditional means that it comes from a collective past of some sort. But this is not the past as collected by James Francis Child or Bela Bartok. This isn’t a murder ballad or a transmuted blues lyric. This approach digs at a root arguably deeper than that, a communal past in the psyche, deep in the subconscious, a
surreal or pataphysical soundscape.
Deep as shit traditional music.
I hear Mats Gustafsson and Zoe Pia with this in mind. Theirs is folk music. But that has little to do with what mode or time signature they’re playing in or even what instruments they’re playing on. It’s a sensibility, that deep as shit traditional sensibility, which is the most vanguard one as well because it atomizes timelines and freaks out historical compasses. Gustafsson has been working in this direction for some time now, with his Ensemble E, for instance, and other projects.
Hailing from Sardinia, Pia brings a fresh sound, or in fact many fresh sounds, from the most traditional launeddas pipes to the enormous tone of her clarinet. Both have a feeling for dramatic arc, sometimes long-form, that evolves organically from the sounds at hand, or in mind. The noises of tradition, the southern European psyche meeting
the chilly northern subconscious, together rocking and reeling with a combination of urgency and patience.
Listen for the details. The small sounds embedded in other sounds.
Gentility and force. Immediacy and duration.
A reconciliation between different ages, different vocabularies, contrasting backgrounds. A celebration of shared sensibilities.
Here they are, in three Rites, ushering the listener along, through the passage, the rite de passage. The cavernous sound of Sardinian and
Swedish-Austrian soul. Not dark, but darkish.
Passing the tray. No bbq here, but some Porcheddu and Schweinsstelze, for sure.
John Corbett, Chicago, July 2024
All tracks by Zoe Pia (SIAE) and Mats Gustafsson (STIM)
Recorded by Angelo Mincuzzi at Casa del Jazz in Rome,
on 15 and 16 May 2023
Mixed by Andrea Cutillo, mastered by Massimiliano Cervini at Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone in Rome
Recording, mixing and mastering supervision Roberto Catucci
Producer Roberto Catucci
Production assistants Francesca Pompili, Noemi Quarantelli
Photos by Žiga Koritnik
Liner notes by John Corbett
Design by Creation
Titles inspired by Paul Auster
Thanks to Fondazione Musica per Roma, Roberto Catucci,
Noemi Quarantelli, Federica De Filippis
Thanks to Žiga Koritnik and John Corbett
Parco della Musica Records
Fondazione Musica per Roma
Contacts
www.auditorium.com
records@musicaperroma.it
www.facebook.com/parcodellamusicarec
MPR181CD
Published in March 2025
All tracks by Zoe Pia (SIAE) and Mats Gustafsson (STIM)
Recorded by Angelo Mincuzzi at Casa del Jazz in Rome,
on 15 and 16 May 2023
Mixed by Andrea Cutillo, mastered by Massimiliano Cervini
at Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone in Rome
Recording, mixing and mastering supervision Roberto Catucci
Producer Roberto Catucci
Production assistants Francesca Pompili, Noemi Quarantelli
Photos by Žiga Koritnik
Liner notes by John Corbett
Design by Creation
Titles inspired by Paul Auster
Thanks to Fondazione Musica per Roma, Roberto Catucci,
Noemi Quarantelli, Federica De Filippis
Thanks to Žiga Koritnik and John Corbett
Parco della Musica Records
Fondazione Musica per Roma
Contacts
www.auditorium.com
records@musicaperroma.it
www.facebook.com/parcodellamusicarec
MPR181CD
Published in March 2025
