Silta is a new label from Italy whose releases are funded in part by advertisements; Out!, their first release, sports an ad for a company called Puma that sells small soundproof chambers called Sound Stations. The photo shows a saxophonist cheerfully blowing away inside one of their smaller models, which looks like a refrigerator with a window punched in the side; the disc was itself recorded inside a Sound Station, though one hopes they gave the irrepressible Carlo Actis Dato a larger unit to make merry in. Acoustically, the results sound pretty good, though there’s too much air/keyclick noise at times, and the weird electronicky ending to “Hanabi” sounds more like an engineering problem than an intentional sound-effect. The music itself is a respectable, unremarkable blow, most notable for having greater jazz content than usual for Dato – several tracks are underpinned by walking bass, and there are nods to Ornette (“Out!”) and Gillespie (“Boulevard”). Dato’s barrelling, untidy improvisations and Dini’s limp basslines don’t exactly set the foot tapping, but it’s still nice to hear the saxophonist in this kind of setting once in a while. The best piece, though, is “Bosphorus,” where the musicians test out the acoustic properties of the recording space and come up with something intense and austere; Dato’s rich, slow-moving drones, full of clashing soundwaves, aren’t too far from the work of John Butcher. Aside from that track, though, there’s nothing here of interest to any but the hardcore Dato enthusiast.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, April 2005