Label: No Label

なんと通算100タイトル目となる記念すべき一枚!!イタリアのギタリストであるM. Beckmannが自身の考えるローカルなアンビエンスを伝えるべく、エクスペリメンタル、アンビエント、環境音、ドローン、ポストロックを織り交ぜたスタイルにて立ち上げた個人プロジェクトThe Volume Settings Folder。各タイトル限定50部で統一、一つ一つ異なる手作りのパッケージデザインが美しいセルフシリーズ。程よくノスタルジーなサウンドスケープ、変則な動きが心地良いギター音響、更には気配の様な音像までをやってのける素晴らしい音楽性の持ち主。本作は長年に渡り取り組んで来た"Folder"シリーズの第9弾であり、自身の故郷と家族へ捧げた最終章。自身の父が写った1950年代の写真を用いた美しいデザインのDIYパッケージ。







Includes the bonus track "Farm Boy". Preview it here:

the volume setting folder is a project born first and foremost to forget an ex.
it developed to become a very personal relationship with music, and this 100th release is just one last tile on a mosaic that is full of nuances, where you can trace back an evolution in style, instrumentation, and influences.

having Folder #09 as the 100th release was not planned but it turns out to be one happy coincidence. when I started it I was inspired by an anonymous artist who published 13 "Untitled" ambient albums on Boomkat, all in a yellow-ish 1950s post-like blank paper envelope, CDr format. I was so very captured by both the lo-fi quality of the music, its very intimate feeling and aesthetics. I really wanted to have something like that as the volume settings folder.

all the "Folder" releases can be grouped in triads. #01 to #03 share a very minimal, more polished vibe; #04 to #06 a heavy modern-classical and post-rock influence; #07 to #09 a love for tapes and open compositions.
as always there's an homage in the graphic design to my land (if you flip and align the insides of Folder #07, #08 and #09 you will obtain a map of the Dolomites, not far from where I live) and family (yep, that fierce boy in the very middle of the cover is my dad, holding a bottle of beer probably in his teens, 1950s Italy, surrounded by friends).

this is an homage to the past that was and the past we can only imagine, to the feeling of nostalgia some of us always seek and can only find through smell, images, music.