Alessandro Cortini - Scuro Chiaro (LP) - Clear Vinyl

Alessandro Cortini’s Scuro Chiaro arrived on Mute in June 2021, and it still feels like a quiet jolt. The title flips “chiaroscuro” into “dark light,” which is a neat clue to the music’s mood. This is not a record of neat binaries. It’s a study in murk and glow, of tones that feel corroded yet oddly tender. If you’ve followed Cortini through his Forse series or the bruised romance of Volume Massimo, you’ll hear familiar DNA here. Slow-blooming melodies. Distortion that feels lived in rather than aggressive. That sense of a single instrument breathing in a room, leaving a trace on tape.

Cortini made his name not only as a solo artist but as a key member of Nine Inch Nails, and that pedigree shows up in his command of texture. He’s a master at finding the moment where a synth stops sounding like a synth and starts sounding like weather. On Scuro Chiaro, he leans into that quality. Pieces start as a gray smear, then a melody peels out of it like sunlight through fog. He favors analog systems and tactile controllers, and you can hear the human hand in the way the pitch wavers or a filter opens just a notch too far. It’s not about perfection. It’s about presence.

What I love most is how patient the record is. Cortini isn’t trying to dazzle. He lets a phrase hang, lets you live with it, then seasons it with a soft hiss or a low throb that nudges your ear to a new corner. The result feels less like a series of songs and more like a walk through adjoining rooms. Each has its own air pressure. One is all high shimmer, like neon reflected in rain. Another sinks into a chesty bass figure that keeps pulsing even after the sound fades. There’s no cheap payoff. The beauty lies in how careful the changes are.

Scuro Chiaro also works as a subtle sequel to Volume Massimo. Both were released on Mute and share a melancholic, melodic core, but this one is rougher around the edges in a good way. It’s got the contemplative pacing of his earlier Important Records releases, with the melodic confidence he’s honed over the last decade. If Volume Massimo felt like letters you never sent, Scuro Chiaro feels like remembering why you wrote them.

It landed well with critics too. The album drew praise for its restraint and its tactile sound design, that mixture of grit and glow that Cortini has made his signature. Longtime fans gravitated to how hospitable it feels. You can sink into it on headphones and find micro-details in the noise floor. Or you can let it set a mood in a room and notice how it changes the way you move through space. That might sound airy, but there’s a practical side to it. This is a record that makes time behave differently.

If you’re thinking about Scuro Chiaro vinyl, do it. Cortini’s work thrives on the format. The gentle saturation, the way the noise sits under the music, the tiny pitch drift at the run-in groove. It all suits his approach, and Mute tends to treat packaging and mastering with care. There’s also the pleasure of filing it next to Avanti and Volume Massimo and seeing the arc of his work in your shelf of Alessandro Cortini albums on vinyl. If you like to buy Alessandro Cortini records online, you’ll find plenty of copies floating around from trusted shops, and even the standard pressing captures that warm, ghostly body his fans chase. I’ve even spotted it tucked into the ambient and experimental section at a Melbourne record store, which felt just right among the local vinyl records Australia heads like to champion.

Scuro Chiaro isn’t a showy album. It’s a steady companion, the kind of record you put on at night and keep flipping because it fits the room. The emotional core is real. Not sad for the sake of it, but reflective. You can hear someone working things out in sound, finding light in the grain of something worn. That’s why it sticks. It has a voice, and even when that voice is just a single note holding on, it feels honest.

If you’re new to Alessandro Cortini vinyl, this is a lovely place to start. If you’re already in deep, you know the drill. Clear the table, dim the lights, drop the needle. Scuro Chiaro will do the rest.