The Telephone by Matteo Uggeri

https://telephone-makingof.weebly.com/
This is by far the weirdest release by Matteo Uggeri in his whole career, that started in 1993 and developed along many collaborations along the years and culminated, so far, in 2022, with the Starlight Assembly project involving the 4AD historical singer Dominic Appleton (This Mortal Coil and Breathless).

For this bizarre album, which design, recording and releasing took over 8 years, he's also surrounded by a good bunch of fellow musicians. Each of them has been invited to sing a song, a cover, at the phone with Matteo. The tracks are direct takes through the delicate, old microphones present in the (70's) telephone handsets.

Integrated with bits of conversations, crackles, background noises, hisses and breaths, they result in an album which is an unique flow of whispered vocals on sparse instrumental arrangements.

The album is released in three formats, from an extremely limited to 15 copies "Dial Box Edition", that includes a real old hacked (but working) phone handset with a true 3.5mm audio jack to a limited CD with 85 different black and white postcards covers included, to 30 cassettes.

Matteo Uggeri is an Italian visual designer and composer from Milan.

He invests himself in sound poetry of everyday life, organized around a vast array of personal field recordings and melodic compositions meticulously arranged in a story-telling way.

He's part of the duo Starlight Assembly along with Dominic Appleton and he plays in Sparkle in Grey, Open to the Sea and The Last Five Minutes.

greysparkle.com