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Giuseppe Ielasi, "Gesine"
Ielasi's last solo record Plansis an overplayed favorite of mine and one that marked quite a departurefrom the artist's past work as a featherweight improv stylist, a minerof hidden textures and master of the infinitesimal dynamic. Planswas a grandiose electroacoustic collage largely avoiding Ielasi'stradmark guitar which appeared only at the beginning and end of thepiece, resolving the brief flights of lyricism able to tilt thedisparate currents of the whole toward a slow expanse of weightless,melancholic bliss.Häpna
Gesine marks the return of the guitar asdominant voice, this time a rarely-treated almost acoustic soundoccupying a far more subdued setting. Backed only by finger-snap-sizepercussion, a few earth-toned hums and feedback drones, the instrumententers within the already charged atmosphere of the bedroom where thelowest relief or incidental amplifies to the potential hinge for asong's drama. Ielasi's guitar drops like ink in water suspension,coloring and adding sculpture to the backdrop's warm restlessness. Hisfigures, though, are not fixed, meandering instead across a ghostly andascetic blues, very much in the MazzaCane Connors or Charalambidesrealm and with a similar hidden complexity. Close listening providesthat Ielasi has in many cases, quadruple-tracked his guitar, two of itsclones doing a mirror-walk on the scratchy surface level blues patternswhile two more layer harmonic overtones beneath. These under-layerstake on a degree of sterility in their arrangement and inhumanconstancy, pulling Gesine further from the golden antebellumviews of Connors and the C-bides and closer to the disquietedatmospherics of Ielasi's fellow Italian and Viennese improvisers. Bythe fifth of the six tracks, background and foreground have coalescedinto a dual-stranded dagger of whining feedback, a slow black-out of Gesine'sintimate texture that leaves only the drowsy, given-up plucking of thesixth track to map out a final hesitancy. The 30 minute disc is simplyone more beautifully packaged and recorded release from Ielasi, theabove only one reading of music whose inflated miniatures and subtleguitar anti-heroics require many more.
Gesine marks the return of the guitar asdominant voice, this time a rarely-treated almost acoustic soundoccupying a far more subdued setting. Backed only by finger-snap-sizepercussion, a few earth-toned hums and feedback drones, the instrumententers within the already charged atmosphere of the bedroom where thelowest relief or incidental amplifies to the potential hinge for asong's drama. Ielasi's guitar drops like ink in water suspension,coloring and adding sculpture to the backdrop's warm restlessness. Hisfigures, though, are not fixed, meandering instead across a ghostly andascetic blues, very much in the MazzaCane Connors or Charalambidesrealm and with a similar hidden complexity. Close listening providesthat Ielasi has in many cases, quadruple-tracked his guitar, two of itsclones doing a mirror-walk on the scratchy surface level blues patternswhile two more layer harmonic overtones beneath. These under-layerstake on a degree of sterility in their arrangement and inhumanconstancy, pulling Gesine further from the golden antebellumviews of Connors and the C-bides and closer to the disquietedatmospherics of Ielasi's fellow Italian and Viennese improvisers. Bythe fifth of the six tracks, background and foreground have coalescedinto a dual-stranded dagger of whining feedback, a slow black-out of Gesine'sintimate texture that leaves only the drowsy, given-up plucking of thesixth track to map out a final hesitancy. The 30 minute disc is simplyone more beautifully packaged and recorded release from Ielasi, theabove only one reading of music whose inflated miniatures and subtleguitar anti-heroics require many more.samples:
