It’s been seven years since Italian tape fetishist Valerio Tricoli’s last album.

He hasn’t been twiddling his thumbs however, instead Tricoli has been working tirelessly on a litany of collaborations – with Thomas Ankersmit, Antoine Chessix and of course his band 3/4HadBeenEliminated – rather than putting his focus on solo material. New “magnum opus” Miseri Lares then, is something of a milestone, checking off a long period of ideas and techniques and serving as an introduction to many listeners unfamiliar with his prior work.

The album will be released on Bill Kouligas’ esteemed PAN imprint on April 28, and is touted as a contemporary exploration of the musique concrète techniques perfected at the legendary Institute GRM. Tricoli’s weapons are his various tape recorders – from reel-to-reel units to handheld dictaphones – and he takes blustery segments of sound and dissolves them in a soup of noise, drone and fractured vocals.

Taking snippets (in English and Italian) of poetry and prose from Dante, H.P Lovecraft, and The Bible, it’s heady stuff, but Tricoli never allows the heady themes to overwhelm the jagged, endlessly confusing “sound sculptures.” You can hear the 8-minute ‘Le Qoheleth ✚’ below, and you’ll start to at least get an idea of what you might be in for – this ain’t easy listening, but we reckon it could be one of the best things to emerge from the PAN imprint thus far.

Tracklist:

A1 La Distanza
A2 Hic Labor Ille Domus et Inextricabilis Error
B1 Error
B2 In The Eye of The Cyclone
C1 Das Schräg Haus
C2 Le Qoheleth ✚
D1 Miseri Lares
D2 In Your Ruins Is My Shelter