The summer of 2006 was hot, but the summer of 2003 was also extreme. It was the month that Italian musician Hue worked on a CD, traveling the small villages of Italy, armed with minidisc and a microphone to record the people working and various other kinds of sounds. A year later, Hue visited Davide Valecchi (also known as Aal) and played guitar with him. From then on the album 'Un'estate Senza Pioggia' emerged as Hue also recorded some other friends, such as Giuseppe Verticchio (Nimh), Giulio Biaggi (Nefelheim), Andrea Marutti (Never Known, Amon, The Afeman), Paolo Ippoliti and Laura Lovreglio (both of Logoplasm) and Luca Sigurta (Fhievel). Some of these people are known for some more abstract, non traditional musics, but Hue managed to find them in a rather playful mood. The title translates as 'A Rainless Summer' and is a quite nice work of some of the more daring areas of ambient music. Traditional instruments of ambient music, such as guitars, organs and didgeridoo, play the more recognizable and accessible part of this work, but there is also lots of space for elements from the world of glitch and the processings of field recordings - still the starting point of this work. Sometimes warm (pun intended) and joyous, some with the chirping of insects and dogs and a desolate guitar, empty and spacious. Not an album of major surprises, but a fine release on the brink of seasons changing.

(Frans De Waard)