GUISEPPE IELASE & HOWARD STELZER - night life
(CD, Brombron)
Brombron is an interesting thing. Founded in 2000 by
Staalplaat and Extrapool, it is now a cooperative venture by Korm Plastics
and Extrapool with co-curator Frans De Waard, and settled in Nijmegen,
Netherlands. Two artists are given a week with free and full control over
a recording studio, where they are able to do whatever it is they want.
Something they always wanted to do or something they come up right there
on the spot. These artists might be good friends or complete strangers to
each other. Artists that were given ability to record under these very
cool circumstances include Main (Godflesh, Loop), Jason Kahn, Heimir
Bjorgulfsson (Stillupsteppya). Tore H. Boe, Stephan Mathieu, Joe Colley and
Jason Lescalleet and others.
For Howard Stelzer the opportunity to contribute to this series was
quickly linked to inviting his friend and fellow artist Guiseppe Ielasi.
The plan for the week reads like a nice holiday – anything away from
everyday life is holiday, at least, it will be if you regard it as such
– in the description of Stelzer.
Stelzer uses electronics and tape recorders while
Ielasi adds some noise and plucks from his guitar, but differently from
the style that I loved so much on his “gesine”-album (on Häpna).
Well, there we got thoroughly composed electronic songs with multiple
layers of stuff, and here it is two artists freely improvising and then
re-editing. Sometimes a week can go by way too fast, especially when you
are trying to enjoy the time and spend it wisely in a relaxed manner. This
setting translates only partly into the music, though.
They start off easy, slowly fading the sound into the
area of the listener. Sounds emerge from subtle noise, dribble and trifles
exchange settings with harsh blasts of white noise or the clutter of metal
parts (like welding not the musical style) and tools. No time to relax and
sit in the sun with a nice drink and enjoy the clicks and plinks, but
after some time you’ll always expect the worst to happen. And then it
might come - or not. So you expect all kinds of other things to happen.
So, in effect, nothing might happen.
Basically, it is all electronic manipulation of sounds
from both artists most of the time, the acoustic guitar only comes up
redunantly to soothingly remind us of where some of the sounds on here
came from. During the third track they drop into a long drone of noise
with subtle changes, flickers and even a church bell ringing, or at least
something sounding like a church bell. It is easy to realize that these
two know exactly what they are doing. For Howard Stelzer, with his vast
discography and biography, such a statement might sound pompous from the
writer but for “newcomer” Ielasi it is a definite compliment, because
he is able to show a completely different side of his abilities.
