La Coda Della Tigre

On La Coda Della Tigre (The Tail Of The Tiger), Prima Materia set their stall very clearly and cleanly – massed vocal improvisations that grab hold of long-held tones and let them breathe and morph in subtle convolutions. There’s an exploration of overtone here, sure, but the real pleasure is in hearing these non-professional vocalists wrestling with, and working their way through, compositions that drone with a roughly sculpted beauty that’d be inaccessible to more seasoned, veteran performers. You can possibly draw some lines between the use of voice in La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s Theatre of Eternal Music, though Prima Materia doesn’t feel quite so reductionist and mainlined as that work; there’s an open breathiness to La Coda Della Tigre that’s completely compelling. Ostensible leader, Roberto Laneri, would go on to release some rather nice solo and collaborative albums over the years, but this is where it all starts. It’s no surprise to discover the label it was released on, Ananda, was co-run by composers Alvin Curran and Giacinto Scelsi.