cassette

CASSETTE (Italian for “cassettes”) is a section of this website where I share short audio fragments captured during my ongoing sound explorations and practices. These recordings are often intended for playback through a few portable tape recorders—typically a Sony TCM-459V or TCS-580V—used during my live performances.

I use these Walkmans to introduce fixed sounds that interact with and layer over ambient noises, blending with or amplifying the natural background, while I am producing acoustic sounds by using the percussive qualities of found objects encountered on-site. Though the presence of the Walkmans is acoustically significant and strongly shapes the overall soundscape, the specific content of the pre-recorded tapes often remains faint or barely perceptible to the audience during live actions. Sensing this as a kind of lack—and wanting to give these tapes some sort of dignity—I’ve recently begun digitizing them. This is an attempt to preserve and highlight these raw, peripheral sounds that, though often overlooked, are central and recurring elements in my artistic practice.

Note: Most recordings were captured directly using the Sony TCM-459V or Sony TCS-580V portable tape recorders and/or a Nakamichi CR-2E tape deck, with both looped and non-looped tapes. Some, however, were recorded using a Zoom F3 digital recorder paired with a stereo set of Neumann KM184s or DPA 4060s, or a Sony PCM-M10. These were sometimes roughly edited and later transferred to cassette.

walkman-FIELD-CUTs

Three short excerpts taken from a cassette I used for a sound action held in a rural area of Serbia, as part of the Polja Festival x SHAPE platform in June 2025. The recordings are rough and chaotic, consisting of a rehearsal I recorded directly to the walkman to prepare the performance along the riverside in Cesena, Italy.

LOOP - Thai gong

A loop taken from a pink cassette I used in a performance with dancer/choreographer Yasmine Hugonnet as part of Triennale Milano Festival in March 2025. The tape is quite old (it had a sticker dated 2017), and I presume that the main sound source was a small Thai gong that I can no longer find.

wooden chimes

This fragment was made by using four heavy rosewood sticks, hung on a metal chain and gently touched to allow them to oscillate and beat one another, creating strange rhythmic patterns. I made the tape using some cuts from an original recordings byAttila Faravelli on a Sony WM-D6C and used in the live soundtrack of the theater piece “Pinocchio” by Teatro Valdoca [2021].

cymbal

Two short improvisations on a 22-inch china cymbal and a skin instrument, aimed at creating rumblings, scratchings, and gloomy drones. Presumably recorded with a Sony WM-D6C, with variations in tape speed. Used only once in a live setting: each recording was played back on portable Walkmans scattered throughout the space while I improvised with the same acoustic instruments.

oscillazione di un albero

These excerpts were recorded together with Attila Faravelli, using the oscillations of a dead tree lying on the ground, near Rifugio Abetaia Ranuzzi Segni, in the Bolognese Apennines. We spent some time with it, simply enjoying the deep sounds that emerged from its crackling wooden frictions. The recordings were made in August 2024, while working on Ciglia, a project commissioned by MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna.

gong and field recording

A brief audio test created in a live setting using an 18-inch gong and an audio transducer. It was recorded on tape with a Nakamichi CR-2E. The recording was intended to be played back on a portable walkman while I repeated the same process that led to the original recording, in order to create two layers of the same sound material. I rehearsed for a little while, but my interest in using the gong live faded quite soon.

isia [tape noise]

Two shorts excerpt taken live with a Sony TCM-459V to be re-played as a background noise during a collective performance realised at MicHub Pescara, together with Fabio Perletta and his class of students at ISIA Design Pescara.

tibetan bells

Two audio excerpt of a tape made for a walkman Sony TCM-465V within the frame of the project Tibetan Bells - del sorgere e del dissolversi.

The project proposes a sound experience/listening session inspired by meditative practices involving Tibetan singing bowls, but it diverges from these traditions to offer an artistic and materialistic interpretation of their sonic power. The bowls are not presented as healing instruments, but rather as sound objects capable of transforming the acoustic environment, generating both harmony and moments of tension and dissonance.
Through a textual introduction that invites mindful and independent listening, the audience is guided to perceive not only the calming dimension of the sound but also its vibrational complexity: unstable resonances and layered textures that encourage a focused observation of the body and the acoustic experience. Original recording of the bells and edit was made together with Giovanni Lami.

markhor

Three excerpts from a 2017 tape, roughly recorded on a Sony TCM-459V before a performance with dancemaker Cristina Rizzo at Cango – Cantieri Goldonetta in Florence. This encounter later developed into a series of performances titled Markhor, dedicated to improvisation between sound and movement and presented at various festivals across Italy.

senza oggetto

This is an audio track used for a live performance in Paris, at the invitation of INA GRM – Groupe de Recherches Musicales, in January 2026. The piece consists of an electroacoustic performance for percussion and objects, combined with fixed sounds diffused through the GRM Acousmonium. This excerpt, one of four different sections, features wooden and insect sounds.