SVART1 is the pseudonym of Raimondo Gaviano, an Italian musician who lives and works in Sardinia. The title of his latest work that I present today is Praha.
Svart1 is a representative member of best music scene into this big island of Sardinia, located at the center of Mediterranean Sea, which has especially into experimental grey-area and around the electronic music, some known musicians and also many followers and fans.
This last work of Svart1, titled Praha, is a limited edition CD produced by a non-Italian label, the Mrtvaja Records, a small and independent Bosnian label, born in 2009. The Mrtvaja label produces really fine limited editions of works of experimental electronic and electro-acoustic music. Svart1, in this case, works for Mrtvaja Records but hi has realized various productions for others independent labels and also more self-realised productions. All the discograpy is visible on his personal website. Svart1 during his career have also many collaborations with other artists of the Italian and European electronic scene.
Gaviano, as I said earlier, working in Sardinia like many other electronic musicians his countrymen and also for this reason is really used to have a necessary great productive autonomy and often also move beyond the narrow confines of this island to interweave many contacts and collaborations with others musicians who working overseas.

This work Praha is an example of this easy "way of life" to migrate overseas for Sardinian artists. Praha contains a recent live of Svart1 recording in Prague (at the Cafe V Lese during March 2012 for an event organized by Arkham Productions (http://www.arkham.hys.cz/).
The Arkham is one of the most renowned cultural promotion agencies of that city and, on the same occasion, also the Czeck artists of the Seismic Wave Factory performed a live with the VJ's of the Fuck TV project (you can found some infos about those projects on http://www.industrialgallery.com).

This album Praha is a very good work for me. And his tracks are a perfect testimony of the genuine and sincere approach to the electronic music of our Svart1. A careful listening to this record reveals very positive for the mind as a persuasive mantra, at times more hypnotic, familiar and comfortable for discerning ears as a carpet of self-constructed rhythms that are never predictable or consistent.
For example, into the opening track, an audio sample of a simple running sewing machine turns into a cyclic pre-apocalyptic drone portends an impending flood. And all the work is a successful and enjoyable example of the best minimal noise with grafts of electronic ambient that are always expertly blended to work together without any mannerism.

A great job so this Praha, which I recommend, however, to hear before a random search on Youtube videos work by Svart1/Raimondo. Because the artistic research of Raymond Gaviano is never just or only music. And for this reason surely a single CD audio is not able to give a full idea of his works. For those, like me, who knows and follows it from many years it is difficult to separate these two aspects of sound and video image which, in this case, are always intimately linked.
The self-produced video by Raimondo Gaviano, run behind him during his live performances and are little masterpieces. Each concert, for the spectator, is indeed a beautiful multi-sensorial experience that is based on the close union between music and the video processing of extreme or dreamlike images that emphasize and amplify fueling our imagination in a growing fact of endless cinematographic references and citations.

Finally i recommend also you to not stop only at this album Praha, last work of Svart1/Raimondo Gaviano, because I hope, after this review, please you to go on the net, for a search around his other works.
Because Svart1 is a complete artist. A good electronic musician but also a great video maker and a fantastic manipulator of digital images. The post-industrial atmospheres that his work created for us, by masterly use of a thin, black and white very dry, or with a color change into a soft focus often dissolving in a strong light and dark, thwarted and diverted, are the best description possible of the ruined worlds that surrounds us and surrounding our post-industrial way of feeling this strange modern life. You have to see the work of Svart1 not just listen.