The origins of ‘The Early Explorations Series’ were briefly touched upon in The Early Explorations Series (TEES) post back in January 2025. Whilst this says something about the process for TEES, it captures nothing of the motivations around the 1999 “Russ Luigolio’s Soundtrack to 'il treno'”. The liner notes for the original CD-R (non-) release (and some post-hoc interpretation) may reveal more:
- One version of the original cover art:
2. Some of the inside cover:
3. A version of the art on the CD face:
4. The description of the work on the back tray:
Russ Luigolio is a fictitious name, an anagram of Luigi Russolo; a nod to some of the experimental ideas in music from the early part of the 20th Century and articulated in The Art of Noises (a version of which can be found here (Russolo, 1986)). The CD-face in image 3 above includes the line “…in this circumstance, which only innovators take into account, lies the pitiless condemnation of all those who believe that music can be made by repeating the usual sentimental strumming, the usual melodic cliches, and the usual melodramatic situations…” (Russolo, 1986, p. 86). Another call to challenge musical convention.
It is here that overlap starts and stops: as a rhetorical device perhaps ‘pitiless condemnation’ serves a purpose but denigration of subjective preferences and experiences of others serves only to divide. There is space for both the challenging and unchallenging. Clumsy metaphor likewise can move things in a given direction, although consequence can sometimes be foreseen. Whilst there are some elements of influence, there are many of no relevance, not least political context. Russolo - a Futurist, noise composer and fascist (see Luigi Russolo, Futurist and Fascist – Alex McLean (2023) for a discussion) - articulates the violence of the then modern world, moving rapidly through and towards technological transformation and global war, part of a movement closely entwined with fascism in Italy.
‘il treno’ as the film that never existed, draws on a train journey (Russolo's own “… complex noises of … motion … changes of rhythm and timbre…” (p47)) as the starting point around which an unstable, cacophonous interpretation of a world in a different era is explored. Rather than celebrating the violence of noise, it reflects on the stupor and the increasing noise of life (both internally and externally) that ensures we keep our heads down, either by choice or by necessity; a warning to the democratic world of where we can end up, when the mundane or the creative is co-opted to nefarious ends, and fear and hatred in their many forms are normalized, celebrated and abused. Indeed, both Lugubrious 78 and Subtle Antimusic - that draws on creative tendencies from the pre- and post-war artistic movements in changing modern contexts - are, and have always been, unashamedly anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-violence, anti-misogynist, etc, etc... In this lies hope of positive progress in contexts of overwhelming negativity and reversal.