Luton - Black Box Animals

2018 release. Black Box Animals is the debut release from the Italian duo, Luton, formed in 2017 by Roberto P. Siguera and Attilio Novellino. The album is a textural feast of classically composed phrasing and heavily tar-coated mechanics. Crawling abstract electronic structures meld seamlessly into a wide array of electro-acoustics, built upon a fine edge that is focused on mood as much as melody. With each piece Luton deliver their own curious venom, striving for contrast, never settling into a predetermined genre. Black Box Animals was recorded around Europe with Luton Sinfonietta Orchestra, during several sessions of improvisation and post production in Stockholm, Manchester, Munich and Turin. The album shares some of the moodiness and frantic delivery of Deaf Center or even Ben Frost's works for film. Elsewhere, the intense drive and alchemic meld of electro-acoustic elements recall the likes of Rafael Anton Irisarri, Steve Reich, or Tim Hecker. While Luton find commonalities with these well-known masters, Black Box Animals makes an impression all it's own, creating an array of complex emotions, leaving us feeling a bit dirty, humbled, inexplicably at ease, perhaps off guard just enough to reshape our damaged conscious into a form of it's own likeness.