Romeo Castellucci, Scott Gibbons, IL TERZO REICH, 2024

THE THIRD REICH is the image and sound of inculcated communication. On a black screen flashes almost all the nouns of the Italian language, about fourteen thousand words. Here, the language-machine swallows whole realms of reality, there where beats, like nouns, appear equal in their mechanical seriality, as if they were the building blocks of a knowledge that leaves no escape. Every pause is occupied: a treatment that attacks the mnestic capacity, unable to retain a word that appears in the flash of microseconds. It is a matter of compressing the gaze and listening to the critical point of fusion, of stretching out just before the loss of perceptual engagement. The work of Romeo Castellucci and Scott Gibbons is an unstoppable flow that overwhelms everything and where the totalitarian transparency of language lets the physicality of sound emerge in all its intensity.

This disc musically presents the facets of a multimedia work in which all named objects are presented as a flash of text and an explosion of sound. All sounds used were taken from transmissions of the Voyager 1 probe sent from outside our solar system as it traverses interstellar space. The stubborn tic that makes up the backbone of the music, as well as the interference and sound processing, come from the absolute horizon of our species, from the extreme limit of our reach. We are left with only an overwhelming sense of density and resolve. Within a few years Voyager 1 will lose its last remaining power and cease transmissions. My intent was for the materials to be physically experienced; the new arrangement and remix for the disc maintain this approach. Loud listening is recommended. (Scott Gibbons)

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