Tools is the latest creation from Italian experimentalist Giuseppe Ielasi. While Ielasi’s work over the years as a guitarist and drone artist has become highly regarded his work on 2009’s Aix (12k1051) completely broke that mold, turned heads, and quickly became one of his most critically acclaimed releases. The fractured, almost jazz-like rhythms pieced together from sampled fragments that graced Aix has been taken one step further in concept with Tools.
Created as singular studies into the physicality of everyday objects, each track on Tools, named for the object from which it was made (“Cooking Pan,” “Rubber Band,” “Paper Lamp”), is a wonderfully playful trip into new ways of listening and experiencing our everyday.
With a title such as Tools, Ielasi has set no preconceptions or metaphors with his music except for the idea to make an experimental (and somewhat ironic) play on the traditional “DJ-tools” type of record that contains buiding blocks to allow a DJ to layer and combine with other records. In Ielasi’s case, however, the twist is in the fact that these tracks, despite being simple and stark, are complex,captivating structures and explorations of physical objects, composed in a way that is becoming signature Ielasi, that becomes perfect experimental music for hazy summertime listening.