Cyclic Defrost (.COM)

Aix steers Giuseppe Ielasi well away from the refulgent romanticism he’s courted on past works. Ielasi no longer manipulates harmonic, timbral, and dynamic parameters with equal emphasis. Instead, he focusses on the material craftsmanship behind his lithe assemblages of micro-samples, percussion, and synthetic textures. The appeal of the disc is found in its tendency to find the poetic not in the ephemeral or indistinct, but the inert and everyday furniture of today’s carping cityscape’s. Ielasi utilizes elastic springs, zippers, winking bells and other miscellaneous objects one might find strewn across construction sites such as the one depicted on the albums cover.

From these disparate sound sources, Ielasi weaves dense, surprisingly intricate, real-time sound collages that pull off the trick of inviting serious investigation while constantly teetering on the brink of instability. Ielasi handles the material with a strong, consistent sensibility, which enables these brief vignettes to retain a cool ease. As he shifts lightly from pieces of jittery disposition and fragile details, to toy-box charms, and close-up gurgles and bony kneed thumps that instinctively unwind like a kind of strange epiglottal sound poetry, all lined with the odd ripple or splash of melody, he maintains a continuous flow without faking up dramatic intensity. On headphones, it becomes a particularly engrossing, warm, even sensuous, sonic tableau. – Max Schaefer