Rebuilding Pantaleone’s Tree

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Strikingly unique, Urkuma’s music offers namedroppers little to cling to. Proceeding from free improvisation and noise, the music pairs together harshness and delicateness to piece together carefully spatialized sonic mosaics. Murmured drones, liquid growls, electrical discharges and acoustic touches: dissembling pieces are assembled into a stunningly unified whole.

Urkuma is Stefano De Santis, born in the Southeast part of Italy. He began his artistic career as a playwright, and later developed his unique musical approach to translate his theatre concepts into sound. Live, he is prone to make use of anything within his reach, including laptop, small electronic devices, clarinet, home-built instruments and tapes.

Rebuilding Pantaleone’s Tree consists of nine pieces of various lengths, including a collaboration with Strinqulu’s David Della Rossa on “Olifante”. The word urkuma is specific to De Santis’ home region of Salento and expresses the opposite to the Buddhist concept of nirvana.

Rebuilding Pantaleone’s Tree is a concept album based on the monk Pantaleone’s marvellous mosaic floor in the Cathedral of Otranto. The mosaic depicts several unusual elements, including a number of animals playing musical instruments, such as the donkey with a harp seen on the album’s cover. Rebuilding Pantaleone’s Tree draws inspiration from the techniques of mosaic art and Pantaleone’s symbolism.