Marta Salogni & Stefano Pilia - Phren (Pre-Order)

A structure rises from the water: an object suspended between architecture and landscape, between reflection and depth. Its surface mirrors the world around it, while within its walls another space exists, a place of listening, isolation and encounter.

Phren, the first collaborative work by Marta Salogni and Stefano Pilia, emerges as a layered and articulated sound-hymn-dialogue between Stefano’s abstract guitar work and Marta’s manipulation of tape machines. Conceived alongside the imagined space created by Sarah Mazzetti for the Opale series, a project by Maple Death Records and Canicola edizioni, the album becomes a form-shifting composition where memory itself is continuously transformed through resonance, repetition and reconfiguration.

Here, sound is not preserved as an object of the past, but treated as a living material: something capable of carrying traces, absorbing new meanings and generating unfamiliar voices.

The album develops from a simple yet constantly shifting principle: a sound is set in motion and then passed through a series of interconnected systems where it is delayed, altered and returned in another form. Stefano Pilia’s guitar travels through a complex chain of modular processes, composed of different stages of preamplification and filtering, before entering a tape echo system that introduces further layers of repetition, resonance and spatial displacement. These signals are then absorbed into Marta Salogni’s Revox tape machines, where additional lines of delay, modulation and environmental transformation reshape the material once again.

The resulting music is not a dialogue between two instruments, but a shared system — a living architecture in which a single signal moves simultaneously through parallel and serial pathways, gathering traces of each passage. Sound becomes a material in constant motion: a gesture becomes an echo, the echo becomes a new gesture, and the distinction between origin and reflection gradually begins to dissolve.

In this sense, Phren enters into conversation with a lineage of artists who have explored sound, duration and recording technology as forms of memory. From the immersive harmonic environments of Éliane Radigue to the fragmented archives of Philip Jeck and the sustained meditations of Pauline Oliveros, these practices reveal recording not merely as a means of preservation, but as a space where time itself becomes audible.

Yet where these works often approached repetition as a way of revealing erosion, disappearance or the fragile remains of recorded material, Salogni and Pilia take another direction. Their loops do not simply return to the past to witness its fading. They become generative spaces, processes through which unfamiliar harmonies, new temporalities and new voices can emerge.

One piece follows a distinct path within the architecture of Phren. “ma la mia anima è testimone” is built around a custom system of just intonation, derived from a specific constellation of harmonics and undertones. Related to Harry Partch’s concept of the tonality diamond, the composition explores a different relationship between frequency, proportion and perception. Harmony becomes a physical structure, shaped by resonance and vibration rather than conventional tuning systems.

The final movement, “e il mio fiume scorre verso te, oh mare, accoglimi” introduces another form of transmission. Fragments from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s Lamentations of Jeremiah enter the piece as a distant voice, carried through layers of transformation and temporal displacement. The timeless vocal material does not appear as quotation, but as a trace, another body of sound passing through the mechanisms of the present.

Across six movements, the titles of Phren unfold like fragments of a submerged narrative:

sopra l'acque scavate
dove mettersi un vento
muti nell’attesa
la memoria vacilla
ma la mia anima è testimone
e il mio fiume scorre verso te, oh mare, accoglimi

Water, waiting, memory and testimony become recurring currents within the work. They are not symbols to be decoded, but physical sensations embedded in the movement of the music itself, traces carried forward, altered by everything they encounter.

The title Phren recalls an ancient Greek term connected to the seat of thought and feeling. In this work, memory is not understood as a fixed archive of what has been lost, but as something unstable and alive: a force capable of metamorphosis.

Like the imagined structure emerging from the Venetian Canal, Phren creates a space where sound can gather, reflect and transform. It does not treat memory as an archive of what has been lost, but as a living material. A force that continues to transform, generate and reveal new voices from within the traces it carries.

“Phren” is the third release of Opale, a series curated by Maple Death and publishing house Canicola Edizioni, sister imprints that for last decade have been exploring and researching the intersection of music and narrative through images and sound, giving life to new dialogues between the two languages, with a visionary and militant approach. Each Opale release will see the parallel production of an LP and illustrated book, linked together by a red thread that runs through atmospheres, emotional temperatures, glimpses of content, and collected in a precious limited edition box set that include posters and unique designs. Marta Salogni & Stefano Pilia’s album is accompanied by artwork, images and a 32 page Singer stitch binding illustrated book/carnet d’artiste by Sarah Mazzetti. Sarah Mazzetti is an Italian illustrator and visual artist whose work moves between drawing, publishing and visual storytelling. Her illustrations have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Die Zeit and The Guardian, and she has collaborated with brands such as Louis Vuitton and Dr. Martens. She is the author of several illustrated books, including works published by Canicola Edizioni. Her practice explores the relationship between narrative, memory and imagined worlds. 

‘Phren’ is funded and supported by the Emilia-Romagna Region under Legge 2 musica.‘