This album comprises the fundamental elements of an exhibition named “La fabbrica e la sua voce” (The factory and its voice) held in 2007 in Pray, where the only Italian specimen of industrial unit alimented by a non-electric transmission of power is carefully preserved by the local authorities. Luca Bergero/Fhievel and Luca Sigurtà (respectively, an engineer in electronics who started trafficking in experimental music in 2000 and a soundscaper active since the second half of the 90s and who refers about a “passion for found sounds” in his biographic notes) assembled the “inside voices” of the plant, capturing a bit of the soul of this ancient building through an accurate work of location recording that included four environments of the edifice, each set for the carrying out of different tasks in the erstwhile productive course of action. This is a classic case where the resulting manufactured article (pun intended) should be applauded more for the documentary value than the effective permanence in the memory of the aural message, which is a rather unsurprising concoction of mechanical autonomy and human intervention that translates into cyclical whirrs and taps, squeaking-and-revolving repetition and so forth, the whole complemented on the odd occasion by electronic purring and fading outlines, the flowing water of the nearby Ponzone creek appearing in between the initial phases of the record as a sort of reassuring presence (too often utilized as a compositional and/or subsidiary ingredient nowadays, if you ask me). It’s one of those items giving just a mere idea of a design envisaged by following the suggestions of the inherent characteristics of a place that definitely necessitates of being surveyed together with what’s heard. Walking across those rooms while the audible symptoms occur is probably very fascinating whereas, taken as a sheer music release, The Wheel already loses a considerable amount of steam after a couple of spins, admirable intentions notwithstanding. Either way, headphones are highly recommended.