Mix Cover: Sovicille, Tuscany, 2020.
Banner Image: Estate section, Tuscany.

Back in November 2025 I got in touch with Giulio Aldinucci and blatantly asked him if he was interested in being part of my Guest mixes. He kindly concurred and sent me this collection of 17 tracks and one instruction: mix them in your style. I have taken my time listening to them, some were very familiar, some were not, some artists were pretty unknown to me. No much need for styling or tricks as regardless of how you stitch them together, they all flow and belong just nicely, most tracks fading in and out of each other with grace, so I decided to mix them following a simple rule: order them from the shortest to the longest, and it turned out quite nicely. I hope you all enjoy.

I discovered the music of Giulio Aldinucci right when Covid hit in February 2020. I was in Italy incidentally. I was a passenger on the flight from Milan to Porto that apparently brought in the ‘patient zero’, infected with the coronavirus. In the chaos that followed, I remember watching the guy on tv ranting live that he was oblivious to so much attention, that this whole thing was just a more severe form of flu, that he’d like to be left alone. In that never experienced perfect storm of reclusion, time to waste and boredom I didn’t subscribe to streaming Breaking Bad and Twin Peaks again, I turned to Ambient music.

When great music arrives by surprise, on a radio show, with no immediate knowledge of author or year, its a blessing. In truth its just like listening to the radio in the 80’s, or anytime before the streaming platforms and the algorithms really. If you know that feeling you also know how devastated you were when you didn’t catch the host back announcing that awesome track he’d played.. Its a great thing to listen to music with no preconceived idea of who’s behind it. The name may give it away, for its Italian roots, but one must focus on connection rather than assumption. Just look at Abul Mogard, another Italian musician, who hid behind his ‘Serbian retired steel factory worker’ story until he came out of the shadows as Guido Zen, back in 2022.

So I was listening to heavy drone and experimental electronics at that time, with the realisation of a new mix in mind, then the track ‘Jammed Symbols’ hit me, and I thought it was fitting. I pictured some avant-garde kid, drunk on Prurient and Siavash Amini with a penchant for Merzbow. Not quite.

The album that started me on Giulio’s music was obviously ‘Disappearing in a Mirror’, released in 2018. That first encounter with ‘Jammed Symbols’ caught me off guard. The realisation that I had missed such a strong album on release, some two years earlier, was disappointing and that is the foundation for this small rant of mine.

As an avid listener and gear enthusiast, its increasingly difficult to keep up with all the music being released today. So, after much thought and consideration I took on a new resolution for 2024: to stop buying vinyl.

I was wasting valuable time on discogs, reading through users reviews and opinion on such and such release. And there was the trade, the relentless swap for the better cut and mastering, the chain of emails and picture taking, and explanations, not different to any online customer service, this had to stop. I would only keep the classics, the generally accepted superior pressings, put to the test on my ProAc Studio 150’s driven by my trusty Pioneer A7, as it has been for 25 years, my trained analog brain, relying on good ears and a cosy listening room. The package and artwork comes a strong second, and I get rid of the rest. Most albums had to go. Around 200 would stay. Giulio’s ‘Disappearing in a Mirror’ stayed, so did Abul Mogard’s ‘Circular Forms’ and Rafael Anton Irisarri’s ‘A Fragile Geography’, some of the ‘modern’ ambient jewels in my now limited collection.

By now I am familiarised with all of Giulio’s releases. The highly appreciated debut ‘Borders and Ruins’, released in 2017, is a mandatory reference and a satisfying precursor to DIAM, the latter wouldn’t exist without the former, and both these albums are recommended in unison, but 2018’s DIAM was my introduction to Giulio’s and nothing seems to top the emotional upheaval I get when listening to ‘Jammed Symbols’.

Giulio’s sound craft is highly addictive if you’re into introspective ambient of the noise and field-recording variety, where a darker, fuller and dynamic variety of layered pads summon at times pretty arresting emotions and thoughts around beauty and misery, loss and glory… contemplations moving beautifully towards visions of human philosophy, empathy, compassion, with a prominent rapport to themes of liturgy, manifested in the use of such grandiose choirs. And that’s where DIAM rises above, in comparison with ‘Borders and Ruins’, for all of my clouded irreligious (earlier agnostic) and modernist leanings, I am sucker for ancient European iconography, architecture, artistic expression and lore (religious or not). This inner reasoning and continuous transformation finds solace in DIAM’s presentation and execution, as Giulio’s rightly exposes:

“Disappearing In A Mirror’ focuses on the fluidity of the identity concept, highlighting the harmonious coexistence of contradictory elements and the transitional features that characterize every transformation. It is a reflection on the current situation of change and disruption and at the same time it is a gaze into the human timeless soul and its inner soundscapes.”

You can listen to a selection of Giulio’s exquisite work in my weekly mixes, like in mix #15, mix #72 and mix #81, which rank amongst my favourite.

Follow and Support Giulio’s journey.

1. Artwork for ‘Borders and Ruins’, by Joe Gilmore
2. Artwork for ‘Disappearing in a Mirror’, by Joe Gilmore
3. Summer 2024, Val D’Orcia, Tuscany
4. Section of an Estate in Tuscany
5. Montelabbro, Tuscany
6. Part of the Pinecone Courtyard (Cortille della Pigna) in the Vatican Museums
7. Giulio Aldinucci at the Centrale, 2023

All images © Giulio Aldinucci.