Audiopile Review: Gigi Masin is a veteran ambient composer whose profile has recently been growing outside his native Italy, thanks in no small part to the estimable Music from Memory label’s patronage. His music is occasionally labelled ‘new age’. This relates less to any association with pantheistic spirituality and more to the sheer blissed-out-ness of his sound. Only the Greek/American new age master Iasos matches him for white-light heavenliness. That’s not to say Masin’s music is one-dimensional, for there’s a distinct note of melancholy lurking in all his glistening drones and limpid piano melodies. And if you think music can’t be intensely blissful and deeply melancholic at the same time, we’d direct you to ‘Plays Venezia’ (originally from 2021 and newly reissued). We’d also note that the second of this album’s three epic tracks is dedicated to Harold Budd, who played a similar trick many times in his own career. Masin does not let the bliss and the melancholy water each other down, though. He simply loads up on both, until they balance perfectly.

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Five years ago, back in September 2016, Stefano Gentile published a photographic book entitled IL SILENZIO DEI TUOI PASSI (The Silence of Your Steps), which collected a series of 56 pictures, both in b/w and colour, dedicated to the nights in Venice. The book was a journey through the most remote “calli” and “campi” (streets, alleys and squares, as they’re called in Venice) in search of the true ‘breath’ of the city, far away from the hordes of tourists who ‘attack’ it every day during daylight hours.
On such occasion, renowned musician Gigi Masin composed a 30 minutes epic ambient track entitled VENEZIA 2016 which was the perfect soundtrack to the images included in the book. The track was published on CD and released bounded with the book itself in a limited edition of 480 copies only, and has been unavailable for years now.
In 2021 Gigi Masin returned to that great piece of music and to its timeless sounds. Finally, Silentes can now offer PLAYS VENEZIA, Masin’s latest work contanining a re-edited version of that ‘pearl’, accompanied by two unreleased tracks composed and recorded in the same period.
Once again inspired by the city, Masin created an enduring and wonderful ambient masterpiece, a sort of return to the origins, to his home. Adding to the intrinsic quality of the originals, the tracks were beautifully mastered by Brandenburg Mastering in Amsterdam.
PLAYS VENEZIA is simply an unmissable release and one of Masin’s greatest accomplishment in a long carrier that never ceases to amaze us.