Angelo Ceriani’s new album, “Lofi Weather,” arrives not with a bang, but like a slow-moving front rolling in off Lake Maggiore, where I imagine his Somma Lombardo studio might catch the changing light. These ten instrumental pieces, curated from two decades of Ceriani simply making music (1995-2015, no less!), feel less like a planned collection and more like leafing through someone’s sonic sketchbook, found tucked away in an attic.
There’s a gentle insistence here, a blend of acoustic strums and electronic textures that hum with a quiet, internal logic. Think Brian Eno, perhaps, but filtered through the dust motes of a specific room, scented maybe faintly of old solder and coffee. The ‘Lofi’ isn’t a trendy filter; it feels inherent, baked into the patient layering of personally sampled sounds, piano notes like hesitant thoughts, and guitar lines that wander purposefully. One minute, a repeating synth loop reminds me, bizarrely, of the precise clatter my grandmother’s knitting needles used to make against her ceramic yarn bowl. Why that memory? Who knows. This music encourages such odd mental detours.
It’s music composed purely for the pleasure of its own creation, and you sense that lack of agenda. No grand statements are being hammered home, no urgent messages scrambled for the airwaves. Instead, it’s the sound of curiosity, of exploration within the confines of Ceriani’s own musical world. The effect is calming, certainly, but also strangely introspective – it makes you listen inwards as much as outwards. It’s organic, minimal, yet full of subtle shifts, like watching clouds assemble and dissipate.
Does it demand attention? Not aggressively. Does it reward it? Absolutely. It lingers like the feeling after a long, quiet walk. What peculiar atmospheres might bloom in a space simply allowed to be for twenty years?
