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The Obelisk Questionnaire: Matteo Dossena of Year of Taurus & Sherpa

Posted in Questionnaire on March 12th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

year of taurus

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Matteo Dossena of Year of Taurus & Sherpa

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I think that I was destined for music, I’m used to write songs since I was six years old. Now I’m 31 and I’ve come a long way to reach that point. When I compose music I’m very strict with myself and I always try to reach the “pathos” in my compositions.

Describe your first musical memory.

My father and I in our old country house listening and dancing under “Loaded” by Primal Scream.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Playing with Sherpa in Het Patronaat Venue at Roadburn Festival. It was amazing.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Probably when, before the release, I was thinking that a project as Year of Taurus could be not well received here in Italy.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

I feel (and I hope) it leads to self-awareness, wisdom, calm, and a detached contemplation of the world and society. I use art as an attempt to balance the madness of the world and the child that lives inside me.

How do you define success?

Maybe just with happiness; my mission is to share sounds, words, feelings and moods. If all of that can be reached by people I will be happy and satisfied for what I’ve done.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

For sure La Casa dalle finestre che ridono an Italian ’70s horror movie by Pupi Avati.

A real nightmare.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

For the latest releases of Year of Taurus and Shigaraki (Franz Cardone, Sherpa’s bassplayer) we have created a little label called Astral Concrete; the intention is to create a movement of artists that we love and share music with handmade packagings… we believe that nowadays music is mostly reproduced via streaming services… so it’s important to give people pieces of art starting from CDs, LPs or tapes.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Art must have the mission to describe something you can’t describe. Sometimes could be entertainment or something useful in everyday life, but I think that the most important things are feelings, art must talk to your soul.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

I’d like to improve my camera skills and to create small videos, edit and combine them with my future compositions.

https://www.facebook.com/yearoftaurus
https://yearoftaurus.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/sherpa.ita/
https://www.instagram.com/sherpa.music/
https://sherpaita.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/astralconcretesoundlabel
https://astralconcretesounds.bandcamp.com/

Year of Taurus, Topsoils (2021)

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Year of Taurus Premiere “Fever, When I Was Young”; Debut LP Topsoils out Jan. 15

Posted in audiObelisk on December 1st, 2020 by JJ Koczan

Year of Taurus (photo by Caterina Vignoni)

Guitarist and vocalist Matteo Dossena of Pescara, Italy, psych-drifters Sherpa will release his first solo album under the banner of Year of Taurus on Jan. 15, 2021. Titled Topsoils and issued through his own Astral Concrete Sounds label, the 32-minute offering brings eight songs that run a line between the post-Yawning Man psych-desert tonality of “Wise Woman” and the washing folk-gaze of “Tethered to the Moon” later, ahead of the jazzy synth, hand percussion and intertwined keys of closer “Piedi Nel Lago.”

In an era of quarantine, the opening title-track shimmers, drumless, and wanders with a sort of purposefully-setting-out drift, but melody is no less central to that leadoff than to its side B counterpart, the more straightforward “Gate Goats.” Dossena works with several others throughout these tracks, bringing guest vocalists Caterina Vignoni and Michele Tobia in on “Topsoils” itself and “Piedi Nel Lago,” respectively. That bookending effect is heightened by the inclusion of bass and drums on most of what takes place between. “Wise Woman,” “Fever, When I Was Young,” “Linesight,” “Gate Goats,” and “Tethered to the Moon” feature the bass of Sherpa‘s own Franz Cardone and the drums of Giuseppe Sericola, who recorded his own parts for Topsoils, mixed most of and mastered the album and has done recording for Sherpa as well.

Dossena himself would seem to handle percussion on the penultimate “Daddy” and “Piedi Nel Lago,” and the former might be programmed — it’s hard to tell — but the effect of having the drums depart earlier than the bass from an album that spends most of its run working as a trio is to give the listener a gradual feeling of fading into the ether. Even with some rhythmic punctuation behind it, “Piedi Nel Lago” feels like the gentle letting go that the entirety of Topsoils has driven toward since the successionyear of taurus topsoils of tracks across the two LP sides began with the soft fade-in of “Topsoils” at the outset, the ringing electric guitar and acoustic woven together with a gorgeous fluidity that balances intimacy of purpose with a marked feeling of expanse.

Those familiar with Sherpa‘s two Sulatron Records LPs, 2018’s Tigris & Euphrates (review here) and 2017’s Tanzlinde (review here), will perhaps find that Year of Taurus works from similar impulses in bringing together acid-folkish melodies and a ready sense of post-rock float in the guitar that proves hypnotic early on such that the atmosphere in the more acoustic-led “Wise Woman” — the noted Yawning Man tone comes in later — and the build-up of “Fever, When I Was Young” feel abidingly natural as shifts not only from one to the other, but within themselves.

“Linesight” follows suit and holds to its central progression for much of its four minutes, as it and “Gate Goats” offer as much movement as basking, bringing about “Tethered to the Moon,” which is arguably the most fervent melodic wash on a record not shy with them. Certainly the loudest. But it never veers into the abrasive — the song or Topsoils as a whole, for that matter — and its ending sets up the closing duo’s going-gone sensibility simply by stopping cold, the slow whispers that start “Daddy” marking the beginning of a somewhat minimal-feeling but engagingly ambient flow, which, again, is backed by the experimentalist vibe of “Piedi Nel Lago,” as Dossena wraps the debut from Year of Taurus with a quirky serenity.

Reportedly comprised of older material reworked during COVID-19 lockdown, it is a presence different enough from Sherpa to warrant being listed as another project entirely, and while can’t be sure when/if Dossena as the band’s compositional spearhead will pursue it further, Topsoils sets a vast scope for itself, remaining coherent even as it seems moment by moment to turn to vapor, and trusting the underlying songcraft to guide its audience through, which it successfully does. If developing that as a distinct entity from Sherpa a project for Dossena over a longer term, Topsoils is an ambitious and welcome beginning.

Ahead of the release of Topsoils on Jan. 15, you can stream the premiere of “Fever, When I Was Young” below. Some comment from Dossena follows, as well as more info on the recording.

Please enjoy:

Matteo Dossena on “Fever, When I Was Young”:

“Fever, When I Was Young” is one of the first songs written of the album. It’s a song about anxiety, melancholy, childhood memories, protection. It’s a song about my mother, the smell of the bread cooking in the oven, the protection I felt ,when I was a child, wrapped in her arms.

“Topsoils” is the first album of YEAR OF TAURUS, solo project by MATTEO DOSSENA (main composer, singer and guitarist of SHERPA).

The album collects songs composed between 2011 and 2020, a set of clippings and songs discarded over time which, during the lockdown between March and May 2020, were recovered, revisited and covered with new sound textures.

The record is about memories, about the melancholy that hides in the plots of time, about friends and feelings that no longer exist; time swallows everything up and our lives necessarily flow too fast to be able to give space to every nuance. The 8 tracks of TOPSOILS try to collect all this by transforming the sonic journey between a pastoral psychedelia and shoegaze.

“Topsoils” avails itself of the participation of Giuseppe Sericola (drums) and Franz Cardone (SHERPA) on bass. Mixed and mastered by Giuseppe Sericola and Matteo Dossena.

“Topsoils” will be released on January 15th for the newborn label ASTRAL CONCRETE.

Year of Taurus is Matteo Dossena (Voices / guitars/ Synth / Percussions)

“TOPSOILS” additional musicians:
Giuseppe Sericola: drums on (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Franz Cardone: bass on (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
Caterina Vignoni: Voice on “Topsoil”
Michele Tobia: Voice on “Piedi Nel Lago”

Recorded in my old house in Montesilvano, between March 2020 and May 2020.
Drums recorded by Giuseppe Sericola at Arcade Studio.
Tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 mixed and mastered by Giuseppe Sericola
Tracks 1, 7, 8 mixed by Matteo Dossena and mastered by Giuseppe Sericola

Year of Taurus on Thee Facebooks

Astral Concrete Sounds on Thee Facebooks

Astral Concrete Sounds on Bandcamp

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