Donato Dozzy: The Loud Silence

The history of the mouth harp is vast: It is believed to have originated in Asia, possibly as early as the 4th century BCE, and its spread extends from Vietnam to Finland, from Siberia to Cameroon. The Dutch musicologist Phons Bakx has compiled a list of more than 1,000 names for the instrument, including the English-language terms trump, gew-gaw, mouthfiddle, Omaha flapjack, and marranzano pancake. It's most commonly known in English as the Jew's harp—a name whose etymology has flummoxed scholars for decades. Spaniards have called it the pio pollo ("squeaking chicken") and the Dutch, the Gedachtenverdrijver ("thought dispeller"). But among its most evocative names might be the Italians' scacciapensieri, or "worry killer"—a name whose meditative connotations go to the heart of the Italian producer Donato Dozzy's contemplative new album, which is built entirely around the instrument.

It's an arcane concept, but Dozzy—whose most common mode is techno—is no stranger to constraints; his last LP, the Spectrum Spools-released Sintetizzatrice, was made using only the singer Anna Caragnano's voice, run through kaleidoscopic, dubwise processing. His approach is similar here, wreathing the instrument's gravelly flange in an airy filigree of reverb and delay. Sometimes he sets the mouth harp front and center, as with the opening "Personal Rock"; Dozzy has described how he recorded the album on the slopes of mountains and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and "Personal Rock", bookended by buzzing bees and distant thunder, swims in that sense of place. On "For Arnaud", the instrument's steady plucks are stretched and warped by subtle delay and chorus effects; the brightness of the tones and the brisk, skipping pulse are light and invigorating, like an early fall morning.

Elsewhere, Dozzy opts for abstraction. "Cross Panorama" sounds like it comes from the same tapes that yielded "Personal Rock", but this time electronic echo all but swallows the source material, and the reverb's resonance throws off great, yearning harmonics. In "Concert for Sails", the instrument is nearly eclipsed by the gentle creaking and slapping of ropes in the harbor. And in "The Net", short, clipped tones are tossed down a ricocheting delay chain, evoking the influential dub techno project Vainqueur, while the grinding title track might almost be a cover of Aphex Twin's iconic "Digeridoo".

It's generally a meditative set, and only on the album's final track, "Exit the Acropolis", does Dozzy return to the sound with which he's most closely affiliated: Tapping out clicks like 808 hi-hats, and weaving three or four layers of mouth harp into enveloping contrapuntal pulses, it's the perfect approximation of Berghain-styled techno. In his notes on the album, Dozzy speaks of trance states and all-night rituals, and here, he successfully unites centuries, if not millennia, of tradition into a hypnotic whirlwind. Not bad for a sound made entirely from a strip of bent metal.