Dino Spiluttini - No Horizon (2018)

Austrian composer Dino Spiluttini stares down the void on No Horizon. While tape loops have featured heavily on previous Spiluttini releases, they form the core of No Horizon’s claustrophobic sound world, representing Spiluttini’s own internal battles with the limbo that surrounds somebody switching medication. “No Horizon is basically the feeling that no antidepressants will ever work, and that I'm forever stuck in this hopeless mood,” says Spiluttini. “Don't worry I feel much better now,” he adds.

Heavily distorted and processed, tape-loops of tumbling notes are at times indistinguishable, squashed into beautiful melting slabs of amorphous melodies. On ‘Healer’, Spiluttini moulds a meditative piano line into soaring ambience, constantly mutating throughout. Both ‘Permadeath’ and the title track have luminescent piano notes fighting their way out of a foggy noise bed. Closer ‘Endurance’ ushers the album out on an (almost) hopeful note, with criss-crossing piano loops cascading around the analogue warmth of Spiluttini’s sonic space. Structured like the emotionally fragile prison of a mind mired in hopelessness and depression, No Horizon is one of Spiluttini’s most delicate recordings to date. His keen sense for moody melody and dramatic sound design are working in total unison here, leaving behind a poignant musical experience that’s as cinematic as it is internal.