ITALIAN DJ, producer and self-styled cosmic traveller Giulio Fonseca has been working across the palette of electronic musics for almost a decade now, since the debut, off-kilter breaks styles of his White Moon EP first hit decks across Europe and beyond.
A lover of global sounds blurred and scumbled into the big, big sounds of Italian house and trance in a festival-pleasing way.
His third album, Meridies, is out this Friday via Hyperjazz Records/La Tempesta Dischi, and is, he says, the result of an exploration of the traditional Apulian music of southern Italy, inspired by his hometown, Taranto, and the phenomenon of the Tarantella.
Tarantism is deeply rooted in South Italian folklore and history. Between the 15th and 18th century, tarantism flourished in the region, presenting as a psychological illness believed at the time to be caused by the bite of a tarantula, scorpion or snake.
Legend has it that the victims, mainly women, would fall into a fit and to achieve healing, they would be subject to a ritual where they would be driven into a state of trance, thanks to a frenzied dance called the tarantella.
And Meridies is a reinterpretation of the rhythmic and musical tradition of southern Italy, filtered through electronica; an interweaving of synths, organs, guitars and even makeshift instrumentation such as cardboard boxes and cookware, all in the service of deep trance and a healing.
With that album just mere hours away, Go Dugong has shared a video for the track “Randagio” (feat. Mai Mai Mai), which you can enjoy herein. In it shamanic headdresses and canine imagery are employed in arcane ritual among the Italian reed beds and quarries; traditional instruments look both back to the past and forward with a filter sweep quality; then synths and the kickdrum arrive to lift the track towards a 3am green-field euphoria.
Directed by Giacomo Laser, were told the video depicts a blind and clumsy being adrift in the Taranto countryside. Like a stray accompanied by his own shadows, he goes looking for something he cannot see; the personification of callous disregard.
Giulio says of the track, on which he worked with the ambient producer Antonio Tricoli, who works as Mai Mai Mai: “With Mai Mai Mai, we share the research, so it was nice and very stimulating to collaborate with him on this track.
“Although developed remotely due to a pandemic, ‘Randagio’ is the result of what unites Toni and me as artists and as music lovers. A dark psychedelic and noise tammurriata [a traditional folk dance of Campania] inspired by some of the abandoned and unfinished places in Southern Italy.”
Go Dugong‘s Meridies will be released by Hyperjazz Records/La Tempesta Dischi digitally, on limited CD (1,000 only worldwide) and vinyl this Friday, November 12th; to order yours, visit Bandcamp.
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