Fonemi – Madre

Vito Santoro is Fonemi and on ‘Madre‘ he has seven tracks. I couldn’t find any other information about him. The cover also has very little information besides a Dylan Thomas quote. No instruments or recording dates are mentioned on the cover. I would say this is a man armed with a sampler, playing around with simulations of real instruments, electronics, rhythms and sounds from more obscured sources. Fonemi creates dark ambient patterns with these elements, adding a bit of rhythm here and there, and it is okay. All right. But at times Fonemi spins out his pieces a bit too much, such as in ‘Attesa‘, which could have been much shorter and thus become more powerful. While the music is not bad it is also nothing out of the ordinary. All of this, I have heard done by other people with better results (and, surely, also a lot worse; Fonemi‘s music has a great, detailed production value), more imaginative and something more personal. If you like dark ambient spiced up with some mechanical loops and rhythms, and you are looking for a new name, then try out Fonemi (I believe ADN Records has no Bandcamp page where you can check their releases) and maybe you find me all wrong.

Frans de Waard (Vital Weekly 1287)