ERALDO BERNOCCHI & BLACKFILM

ALONG THE CORRIDORS

  1/  Where We Stand                             (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         5.05
  2/  Broken Optimism                            (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         5.07
  3/  Lost                                       (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         4.16
  4/  Roadblocker Dub                            (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         5.18
  5/  Dark Area of the Night Sky                 (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         5.36
  6/  Invisible Corridor                         (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         6.07
  7/  Mistakes Pt. 1                             (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         3.28
  8/  Mistakes Pt. 2                             (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         6.20
  9/  1996 Chronicles                            (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         4.49
  10/ Bethnal Green                              (Bernocchi,Blackfilm)         6.15

          Created 2008/2009 at The Place, Castagneto Carducci, Italy and ??
          Mixed by Eraldo Bernocchi at The Place
          Produced by Eraldo Bernocchi and Blackfilm
          Mastered by Eraldo Bernocchi

Eraldo Bernocchi: electronic, beats, programming, treated guitar; Blackfilm: beats, soundscapes.

          2010 - Vital (Denmark), Vital 007 (CD)

REVIEWS :

Cosmopolitan soundstylist Eraldo Bernocchi has a secret, proprietary recipe for thick, black beats and bass no one else can replicate as tastily. To his enthusiastic, cultish fanbase, his imprint is distinct as his fingerprint and he has left it on a huge number of collaborations with the likes of Bill Laswell, Mick Harris, Harold Budd and chanting monks of Tibet. Blackfilm on the other hand is a downtempo dubstep project out of South London just finding its feet.

Despite his long, prolific career and weighty reputation, there is not a single physical solo release under his own name, only a highly-cherished dark dub CD under the pseudonym SIMM. Instead, he prefers to share the spotlight with equally-talented collaborators and he has certainly found a worthy match in Blackfilm. Partisans of Equations of Eternity and his duo work with Harris will immediately recognize a familiar, crepuscular territory of heaving beats, creepy ambience and oozing-tar bass from the opening "Where We Stand", and the dub stance, especially at its most Jamaican, on "Roadblocker Dub".

Yet the darkness is not so thick that it doesn't let in some light, as in the almost upful "Broken Optimism" or the violin strokes shearing through the "Dark Area of the Night Sky". Blackfilm has been praised for the cinematic ambience he brings to his recordings, and "Mistakes" Parts 1 and 2 are excellent examples of this, containing both literal (a sample from a Charles Manson prison interview) and figurative narrative unusual on Bernocchi projects.

The duo close with the brilliant, toned-down drum'n'bass exercise "Bethnal Green", which features piano touches reminiscent of Budd and wisps of the voice of some long gone bluesman.

Stephen Fruitman