Folktronic Giuseppe Ielasi MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

More than three years have passed since a work by Giuseppe Ielasi, who straddles the melodic and the atmospheric, has been featured in the Disquiet Downstream (disquiet.com, July 2005). Fortunately, though, the Italian guitarist has a new release due out in early 2009 on the 12k label, which recently posted a tantalizing track (titled “Untitled #9”) to serve as a teaser preview (MP3).

The four-minute piece opens with lithe, simple finger work on an acoustic guitar. It’s so quiet and subtle, it might be mistaken for a particularly arid slice of cafe folk music, but then the textures begin to make themselves clear. There’s a droning background noise that suggests an accordion, and long held zipper-like tones that could be a bass clarinet, and then the guitar itself begins to transgress, the odd note shooting across the stereo spectrum, a jarring effect when heard in headphones. And soon enough the gap between the guitar and its sonic surroundings has begun to blur, such is Ielasi’s alchemy.

Additional details on the forthcoming full-length at 12kblog.wordpress.com.

Orwellian MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The coast is noisy. The wind rattling against the microphone just adds to the cacophony (MP3). There may be a chime in the distance, as well as a dog barking, and the overall effect is a feeling of the absence of humanity — that you’re alone in the world.

The mode is Orwellian, though not in the traditional sense. “Orwellian” brings to mind visions of surveillance, as well as the claustrophobic embrace of bureaucratic tyranny. Here, in this MP3, the sound is literally Orwellian, for it was recorded near the former Isla Vista, California, home of the late George Orwell, author of, among other things, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The release, titled George Orwell’s Glass House, is credited to Environments, which consists of Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long, both members of the group Celer. As the brief liner note to Glass House humorously states, “The recording was made in between the house (front cover [pictured above left]) and the ocean (back cover).”

Perhaps the metaphorical Orwellian overtones aren’t so much inappropriate as they are redundant. In our world of layperson geocoding (see Orwell’s home, via satellite imagery, below), there’s nothing particularly eerie about the mix of trespassing, both physical and metaphysical, inherent in this venture.

Get the full release, including album art, at the restingbell.net netlabel. More on Celer at artificialcolors.blogspot.com.

Images of the Week: Norwegian Piksels

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Bergen, Norway, gallery Lydgalleriet is hosting part of the Piksel 08 festival, including the work below by (top) Jan Carleklev (carleklev.se) and (bottom) Loud Objects (aka Tristan Perich, Kunal Gupta, and Katie Shima; loudobjects.com):

More info at the gallery’s website, lydgalleriet.no, and at piksel.no. The show runs through December 23.

Quotes of the Week: DS Generation Gap

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Overheard statement in a conversation between two teenagers on the Geary 38 bus in San Francisco earlier this week:

    “Dude, I’ve never seen this many adults with DSs on the bus before. There must be, like, some new game the adults like.”

And, in a useful counterpoint, there’s this Twitter post yesterday by Merleon Cedraeon (at twitter.com/Merleon_C):

    “I am missing Electroplankton. I must get my hands on another copy of the non-game soon!”

Slow-Burn Guitar Quintet MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Following a coy opening chord, “Funnel Cloud” (MP3) by a guitar quintet that goes by the name the Family Tapes quickly descends into details of the instrument that rumble below the familiar techniques — in the absence of strumming and finger-plucking, what’s left are feedback, drones, squelches, tactile noises, and pizzicato pulsing. The Tapes are Alfredo Genovesi, Jeroen Kimman, Jasper Stadhouders, Raphael Vanoli, and Mark Morse, the latter better known to Disquiet.com readers as (dj) morsanek, a participant in the Brian Eno/David Byrne remix collection Our Lives in the Bush of Disquiet. Together they create an admirably restrained sense of ensemble, a mix of distinct sounds that seems, from the distance provided by a recording, easily imaginable as the work of just one individual, alone with a guitar, a toolbox, an amplifier, and perhaps some simple looping technology. The overall sense is that each of the five members of Family Tapes, aware of the energy potential inherent in a guitar, is holding back, so as not to overwhelm the others. And the resulting detente is therefore just as full of tension as it is of quietude.

More at morsanek.blogspot.com and subdist.com/familytapes.