[ Recensioni / Reviews ]
NIMH: The Impossible Days (CD 2005 - Amplexus - Second Edition)
Giuseppe Verticchio is easily one of the most prolific and interesting names in the Italian ambient-electronic underground, and it's about time he got the attention he deserves from labels and public. "The impossible days" is a mature, inspired cd combining the best characteristics of works like "Line of Fire" and "Frozen" but taking them one step ahead. Far from being repetitive, "The impossible days" seems to take the deep synth layers and field recordings from "Line of Fire" to a different plan; I'd say this is more meditative and indirect in its approach, though not less effective. Actually, these compositions gain strength from their rarefaction, like the brilliant incipit "Lost signals", with its minimal, hypnotic pulses, definitely my fave track here. If I had to mention some akin artists, I'd say the ritual ambient of Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana and Robert Rich at their best has left its mark here; but bear in mind Verticchio's sound easily stand on its own. Really worth checking out, like every other releases of Nimh's.
- Eugenio Maggi - Chaindlk
This album reveals Giuseppe Verticchio’s incredible capacity to introduce us into an unique world of “concrete” sounds that sublimate the common nature. All compositions are means of communication. Concrete noises and electronic fequences are totally intertwined in an homogeneous spectral process. “Lost signals” features a minimal, obsessional synthesised micro-signal, endlessely repeated. It is progressively covered by moving, spherical electronic sequences, a cascade of natural sounds treated in studio. A brainey, lysergic ambience for hypno-like electronics and effects. “The Impossible day” is a short cinematic interlude for manipulated sounds, sustained by rotative buzzing synthesized sounds, discreet repetitive metallic projections. A real menacing sci-fi atmosphere. “Communicating rooms” starts once again with a bunch of evocative, familiar sounds, systematically re-worked with reasonaing electronic noises in order to create some dreamy-like / nightmarish mentalscapes. In “Back to Teheran”, the subjective cinema for the ears carries on with an intense orchestration of concrete sounds taken from everyday life, ordinary rituals and public transports. The electronic treatments add an aura of mystery. It invites the listener to open his senses to new kind of percpetion and interpretation. The album ends with the relaxing, cloudy & floating “The final challenge”. Certainly among the most environnemental, cinematic albums from Nimh. “The Impossible Day” is a very personal work, a real immersive trip throw colourful sounds. It’s indispensable to give several listenings to appreciate all the facets & metaphoric visual expressions. For curious prog (electro) heads!
- Philippe Blache - Progarchives
Come non rimanere incantati davanti al dissolvente astrattismo della copertina, con quelle increspature filiformi immerse in pastorali ingorghi di luce dalle cangianti tonalità purpuree, lasciapassare elettromagnetico per questi "giorni impossibili"? L'autore è Nimh (alias Giuseppe Verticchio), pulsante artista elettronico romano, che si addentra in maniera singolare nella semantica membranosa della sperimentazione più surreale e logaritmica. Si possono citare le frequenze protofoniche di "Lost Signals" (propaggine drenante del subglaciale "Frozen", uscito nel 2002 per la AFE), la fobica ciclicità di "The Impossible Day", l'escoriazione industriale di "Communicating Rooms", ed i quasi dieci minuti di immolazione modulatoria di "Back To Teheran" (con viscerali reminescenze di Vittorio Gelmetti, flagellante sperimentatore dei primi anni sessanta). Il lavoro si chiude in maniera fluorescente con l'affannoso sincretismo di "Undefined Perceptions" e la spirituale immobilità di "The Final Challenge", e Nimh (sta per 'nichel-metilidrato') si afferma quale cristallino alchimista nell'intransigente panorama 'sotteraneo' nazionale, e non solo...
- Maurizio Bianchi - IDBox
Inizialmente autoprodotto in poche copie vede finalmente la luce in edizione ufficiale per Amplexus, "The Impossible Days" di Nimh, l'alias che si è dato il bravo Giuseppe Verticchio. Nodo cruciale, "Back to Teheran", la quarta traccia che ben racchiude l'atmosfera di un disco teso e difficile, oltre la cold ambient del pur bellissimo "Frozen". Musica tutt'altro che consolatoria, densa dei presagi di questi giorni impossibili, come il titolo ben sottolinea. Tra elettroniche urticanti e field recordings, segnali perduti e percezioni indefinite, Nimh disegna ancora una volta una mappa sonora senza compromessi.
- Gino Dal Soler - Blow Up
The Impossible Days is a set of very deep and very dark minimalism from Giuseppe Verticchio, a.k.a. Nimh. from a bass drone, Giuseppe builds vast atmospheres with effects, processes and experimental sounds. He combines sci-fi timbres and organic textures to generate massive soundscapes. He enhances them with bizarre and bombastic samples and hints of ethnic ambience. This diverse collection of eclectic compositions is rare and worthy.
- Jim Brenholts -
Il cuore avventuroso di Nimh (al secolo Giuseppe Verticchio) batte dalle parti dell'ambient-noise di scuola Lustmord. Il suo “The Impossibile Days” rimanda ai cerimoniali esoterici del musicista-scienziato attraverso lo stile medianico delle sue creazioni elettroniche. Un tessitore di atmosfere che eredita lo spirito della cosmic-music più scura e viscerale. Varcare i cancelli di “The Impossibile Days” significa calarsi nel regno delle ombre e dei rumori, assistere all'ultimo atto del ciclo umano in un incubo di suggestioni sospese sul ciglio del precipizio.
- Aldo Chimenti - Rockerilla
Spectral voices, monochromatic recordings of people speaking, echo their concerns here and there. Laid over whole cloth of gritty, echoing ambient. Italian project Nimh play with electric hums, pulsations, loops and intense environmental ambient. Lots of location recordings transformed, mutated, looped, cycling around under a very dense overlay of the aforementioned electric tones and pulsations. This disc seems to crystalize its sound only at about the last third of the disc, before that, you seem to be lost, trying to find your way through a confusing, unfriendly cityscape, haunted by voices. It's difficult, no telling what happens next, you can't get a handhold. Then you break into a bright clearing, and for the last three tracks or thirty minutes, the hums and location pieces reveal themselves as natural occurrances, where you were going all along. The disc closes on a vibrant building of light, and a dismantling of the mechanical fetters that intruded before. Their sounds only here and there as chains and pulleys are broken and cast aside. It's always hard to guess what a sound artist is trying to "say", if anything at all. Most of it is open to the listeners imagination I guess. For me, I found a paranoia and fear surrounding the mechanical, the utility. A transcendence into the next step, ironically through enduring a tyranny of machines. And sometimes this did just seem to be a chronicle of things that never happened, snapshots in a sound journal of truly impossible days.
- Manifold Records
Music for real life, as the title clearly emphasizes.
Among electronic stings and field recordings, lysergic signals and indefinite perceptions, Giuseppe Verticchio, one of the most prolific and creative Italian ambient artists, paints a fresco of extraordinary experimental sounds, summarizing a long time experience in combining acoustic and static effects in an high emotional state.
A dark and tense atmosphere is made by an impressive and articulate utilization of sonic evocative stratifications. Nimh’s cinematic style incorporates extraordinary analogue and digital noises generated by traditional instruments and electronic machines.
A sci-fi soundscape without compromises.
- Dr. Blowfin