Not Waving - Futuro (Music for the Waldorf Project) (2019)

’Futuro’ is Not Waving’s sublime synth/ambient soundtrack to one of the world’s most intense art/theatre experiences: Sean Rogg’s radical immersive artwork ‘The Waldorf Project’ - fusing choreography, spatial design, music and performance into a cohesive experience.

Drawn from more than 20 hours of material made for the project between 2013-2018, ‘Futuro’ finds Alessio Natalizia exploring a style of tonal and spatial minimalism that works as a fine palette cleanser from much of what you’ve heard from him in the past. While not a new solo album, per se, the long form, Eno-like results of ‘Futuro’ demonstrate the full wingspan of Not Waving’s obsessive knowledge and emotive feel for electronic composition, making it in some senses one of the more substantial and unusual releases in his catalogue to date.

Natalizia’s site-specific work ranges from highly emotive synth meditations thru to bittersweet Kosmische intuitions, and milky, Eno-esque beauties. But if any part sums up the widescreen scope of Not Waving’s music in ‘Futuro’, it’s the final side’s 17 minutes of awning, gently curdled synth pads - originally used in a performance to 4000 people in Thailand laid in pitch black, with bodies formed in triangles while dancers caressed their faces. It ends the album with such memorable effect as to make it something of a modern day environmental/ambient classic - and perhaps our favourite Not Waving release in an already enviably deep catalogue.