URBS

URBS reworked is an intriguing combination of ambient textures and location-based field recordings. Originally released only on Compact Disc by Hypnos Recording (U.S, 2012), Sanfilippo now revisits the work years later to subtly re-imagine it using his current creative approach in the same Onix II Studio, in the mountains near Barcelona. The extra textures don’t just add interest to the more crafted sounds on the record; these ghostly audio presences are the primary forms within these blurry ethereal soundscapes. Here Bruno Sanfilippo has softened his sound palette into such subtle tones that it is pleasingly difficult to define what he calls “the boundary between [musical] sound and noise. Gentle and evocative, subtly textural and transporting – maybe you hate or adore it, but it is hardly indifferent to you.


1- Urban Flow
2- The City Reflected
3- Chaotic Order Part.2
4- The Man in the Gray Hat

“Where is the defined boundary between sound and noise? Music usually doesn’t seem comfortable with ‘noise’ – due to the fragility of its aesthetic dimension, urban noise, in its context of common things, seems to be inexpressive. In this work, I incorporate the murmur of cities as one more element that dissolves with the faint sound of electronic sources, in this case, the manipulation of a Korg Radias synthesizer and a Lexicon processor.  The field recordings were obtained using an iPod Touch and recorded in churches, train stations, subway platforms, and the streets and bars of cities such as London, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, and New York. The cover photo was captured from inside a bus in Berlin.” Bruno Sanfilippo, 2023.