20. A REVIEW: Giuseppe Ielasi - Aix

Aix (2009, 12k)

In the realm of *sound art* and other more experimental music enclaves, rhythm, melody, and even structure can still be major faux-pas, too reminiscent of popular *music* I suppose, unless you can conceptualize the familiar into the esoteric, while the experimentalists have generally been far too reliant on drone for a dimebag transcendence, at least for my current taste. But the worlds of noise music and music music have been eloping for quite some time now, despite Pierre Schaeffer*s self-confessed failure to do so. And while techno, dub, and glitch artists have been moving in this direction, their music is often mired in the mechanisms they mull on. Basically it’s an incredible feat to make really beautiful, interesting music that inspires many as much by its accessibility as by the boundaries it pushes. Unless you*re just naturally good at it…

Giuseppe Ielasi (b. 1974) is an Italian artist and musician who has been making beautiful music for quite a few years now. Since the 80*s he has been an active guitarist and improviser, while his recorded works, numbering almost 20, have shown an increasingly skilled use of looped samples (field recording, manipulated objects, musical instruments), atmosphere, and composition. Meanwhile he co-runs Schoolmap Records and collaborates often with Renato Renaldi. My first exposure to Ielasi*s music was through the album Plans (Sedimental) in 2003.

Listening to his latest, Aix, I*m struck now as I was then by the subtlety and bluntness of the music. For one I*m almost always kind of bobbing my head with his music. Some people might get annoyed at this almost-ness – but I relish it – and it is present in most everything he has put out (though his last album August was more drone-based). Ielasi*s rhythm just barely gives you enough to hold onto. Layers of independent rhythms seem to hover and converge around an inaudible invisible pulse. It*s more like walking a tightrope or crawling on the ground than strolling or dancing. And the ear is poised with the same kind of attention required of a tightrope walker or a terrestrial creeper - or it could be.

The mood of the music is as impending as it is consoling, as if you*re constantly approaching someone who*s invisibly waiting to attack you or, alternatively, as if you*re lying down and being leisurely bathed in serial pours of warm water. This dual impression imbues the album, or my hearing of it, with shadow, drama, warmth, and a taste of cinema. Imagine The Godfather, accompanied by Nino Rota*s fragmented score, if you reduced it to only the scenes where people were looking at the camera or out a window.

And at the same time, as much as I could wax on it, this music can just as easily become the half-attended background for all manner of late night séances and dreamings. Ambient, dub, sound art, noise music, music music, minimalist, glitch, turntable-ism, experimental composition - blah, blah, however you want to label it or listen to it, it*s fucking good!


untitled (s/t) (2006, Hapna)

And if you*re unfamiliar with Ielasi Aix, one of his best to date, is a perfect place to start. Aix highlights Ielasi*s mixing abilities which shine in the warp and woof of the various rhythmized tracks. These loosely-threaded rhythms are what characterize the majority of Ielasi*s music and with Aix you hear the style at a peak of its honing. This rhythmic mesh of the music is nicely matched by the colorfully patterned construction site on the album*s cover.

The first two tracks are fairly sparse and insistent. Isolated sounds (a single piano note, a single drum hit, a zipper being zipped) are all woven together to form a minimalist mesh that churns along, as if listening in on some highly organized manual labor. Other musical instruments (notably the piano and guitar) and more dronal elements (often brass or organ) enter as the album continues and these entrances are so effective at pulling the listener into the album.

As in most of Ielasi*s work there is an aesthetic tendency towards a minor mood. Minor mood... i mean like in an in-ruption, black hat, nocturnal nutmeg, abandoned barn... kind of way. It*s not about the *sound itself*, acoustic *phenomena*, phonographic documentation or any other a-motional ego-transcending appreciation that sound art keeps carrying the torch for (though Ielasi has digested this sensibility). This music is about mood. This is due in large part to the tonal choices, but often it has to do with the mutual influence of sound sources and treatments, which arouse subjective but culturally shared associations (be they related to the spatial, action-oriented, symbolic, etc). And this has alot to do with rhythm. With that rhythm our head and limbs can comfortably and willfully (if sometimes a little awkwardly) move with.

Track 3, for example, is classic Ielasi. We begin with a percussed minor chord on the piano, which immediately establishes the mood. The piano chord repeats in a reliable 4/4 time. This is joined by a shaker, which is rhythmically regular but out of phase with the piano. The guitar comes in with the 4/4 piano rhythm and offers a grounding bass line to the entire work. The instrumentation pairs down to introduce the jaw harp enters, with all its folk connotation, which is out of phase with regular beat. The instrumentation pairs down again to introduce a tabla rhythm. Suddenly a lone trumpet note sustains itself and the instruments* sudden return serves to sonically ritualize the trumpet (as it did the jaw harp) in a retrospective manner. A simple and beautiful drama.

Listen to Track 3 here.

The spatial diversity explored at the beginning of track 4 (à la variations on reverb, microphonic proximity, electronic-vs-acoustic, etc) is grounded in dronal goo. This constantly shifting sense of space is scattered throughout the album; and it is one way Ielasi creates a truly unique space in the music itself. Meanwhile, the entrance of the grasshoppers half-way through plants us in a gurgling swamp of noises.

Track 5 would make Radiohead and Animal Collective grin like little piggies with its pointillistic beats, beautiful breaks, distorted bass, tolling bell, and noctilucent drones.

In track 6 scrapes, pizzicatos, creaking wood, various knocks and taps, a piano chord and other sounds come together into what feels incredibly stable, yet belies any consistent dance you might be tempted to.


(another) stunt (2009, Taiga)

As the album comes to a close, more traditional musical instruments are placed in the foreground. The xylophone and guitar in track 7 have a tenuous relationship. Panning and editing are used to good effect here as the most loosely wound track on the album completely unwinds. However, upon repeated listens you can hear there is definitely a grounded rhythm in this track (hand drum + xylophone), but it lies at the bottom of the ocean.

Tracks 8 and 9 are highlights of the album. And undoubtedly so for the structural way they incorporate musical elements of such strong mood. The instrumentation in Track 9 is haunting, uncluttered, and austere, with a chilling bass line surrounded by swells of reeds. Track 8 begins with a layering of percussive sounds, one of which is tonal and underlies the strata with its melody. Everything pauses briefly, pregnantly introducing an atmospherically potent harp/guitar sample (again, the minor place), carrying on over the percussive strata (minus tonal percussion). Again a brief pregnant silence. Everything returns, but this time ritualized with a beautiful descending horn line, buried in reverb. The horn line is doubled by a struck metal coil that reverberates, sounding both familiar and strange (those thunder tubes, a shaken amplifier). But this kind of development, as we described in Track 3, is uniquely achieved by Ielasi and something I bathe in as a listener. Things are layered, taken away, given back with decoration (ritual), substituted with something else, and all supports the atmosphere that gave birth to it.

Listen to Track 9 here.

The atmosphere is the structure (and not merely a novel surface or habitual recourse); and within the atmosphere, everything is constantly alive and changing. Each of these tracks has its own personality and they flow into one another thoughtfully, reflecting the lovely patterns of the individual tracks at the level of the entire album. If your skeleton isn*t audible then your flesh will be noisy. Ielasi is full bodied and gifted. It*s refreshing. Thanks for passing along the gifts.

Buy Aix here.

If you*re into this you might also like C-Schulz & Hajsch (Sonig, 2000); Olivia Block; Seth Nehil; Nino Rota; late Morton Feldman; Duke Ellington (below); Central African Banda polyphony. I don*t know the glitch/techno scene so well, so keep searching if that*s what floats your boat... The last two tracks especially reminded me of Duke Ellington*s *Fleurette Africaine* (from the album Money Jungle). if it got caught in a spider*s web. And it is a gift itself:



O ALTER DUFT