Gedulo vartai is a work with, about and through grief. 

Work on Gedulo vartai (translates as Gates of Grief) started on this day one year back.The fragility of life, guilt, distance, loss, pain – confronted with all of those feelings following a suicide of a very dear person, I struggled. I did not really know where to put all of these feelings. Gradually they transformed into long slow drone textures. Grieving in sound felt better then grieving in silence. 

Working on all of this was a bit like time-traveling – memory work trying gather bits and pieces all in one gained concrete sound forms. Next to completely new sounds, I went through a lot of things that I had created earlier. I cut out some echoes, remastered one of my earlier works (IV, originally composed for dance performance Chaos by Mauricia Barreira Neves in 2016), recorded a song which was composed years back, performed live, but never published (V). 

The long process of handwork to make the cardboard folders for the cassettes was partly an effort to minimise plastic in production. However, partly it was a pursuit to firstly give myself time and space, secondly – to create a work which would reflect the intimacy of pain which the sound material conveys. 

All in all, this work is not meant to romanticise suicide and I hope you won’t read it this way. The bereavement and pain (of those) that remain cannot be romanticised. It’s rather my attempt to live through the hurt best I can, to support those that hurt too, and to remember. 

Revenue for this album will go to support animal shelter Associazione Cuore Randagio Rosolini.  You can also simply support this

Released on February 27, 2021 

All sounds and artworks, manual cuts and folds: Daina Dieva 
Shell layout, box architecture: Vytenis Eitminavičius 

Thanks to Vytenis, Mauricia Barreira Neves, Cristina. 

A Massimo. Grazie di tutto, grazie di cuore.