GIARDINI DI MIRÒ
The Academic Rise of Falling Drifters

Maybe the most impressive aspect of Giardini di Mirò - besides their rare gift for turning melancholy and beauty into audible jewels - is their constant strife to shift their own sound's boundaries with each and every release. Since the first EP, still recorded in the traditional guitar/bass/drums set-up, their instrumentation has expanded to almost orchestral dimensions (violins, clarinet, trumpets, piano, mellotron).  While last year's album "Rise and Fall of Academic Drifting" featured initial vocal exercises by two guest singers, the most recent EP "The Soft Touch" expands on this new direction, deliberately including vocals on every song. Giardini di Mirò's pronounced soft spot for electronic music first surfaced in their collaboration with Australian sound wizard Pimmon.

In this context "The Academic Rise of Falling Drifters" sounds like a natural consequence.  After broadening their musical base, inviting selected guests and collaborating with other artists, the Italians have now trustingly passed their songs into other hands entirely.   The metaphor might be over-used, but Giardini di Mirò truly treat their songs like children and have carefully selected suitable foster parents for their musical offspring. As avid fans they had soon identified the perfect candidates for re-interpretations. And the response and returned respect was overwhelming - despite brimming schedules every single artist requested decided to take part in the project.

The impressive array of participants on "The Academic Rise of Falling Drifters" therefore reads like the mixtape tracklisting of personal Giardini di Mirò favourites and assembles some of the most interesting purveyors of electronic music around: Arne van Petegem aka Styrofoam, who released amongst others, two splendid albums on Morr Music; his labelmates Herrmann & Kleine from Berlin; Nitrada, whose critically acclaimed debut was released some month ago on 2nd rec; Turner, a highly demanded remixer (Tocotronic, A-ha, Miss Kittin, Ellen Alien, Ming and many more); Thomas Knak aka Opiate, not only member of SystemF3 amd head of Hobby Industries, but also producer of two songs from Björk's recent  album "Vespertine"; everybody's darling Dntel, whose last album "Life is Full of Possibillities" (Plug Research)" got raving reviews all over the world; Antony Ryan and Robin Saville from England, better known as isan; and the new and promising project from the American Jason Ruddy, errorEncountered.