Touching Extremes (IT)

Giuseppe Ielasi contributed to this splendidly sunny, if ice-cold Saturday morning by way of his latest release Aix, thus called as it was created in Aix-En-Provence, France (the hometown of double bass diva Jöelle Léandre, for those who really wanted to know) in the autumn of last year. Nine petite segments, constructed through the capable assemblage of pre-taped samples – both from existing records and instruments and the actual world – arranged in a sort of biotic arrhythmic structure that nevertheless results welcoming, at times even delightful. Music which finds nourishment in a cyclical unpunctuality, where the acoustic properties of timbral physicality and a multitude of semi-randomized snippets are consecrated at the altar of a malleable variety of electronica where in reality the electronic aspect is nearly kept in the background to privilege event fluency and textural warmth. There’s not a moment of raucousness or discordance, Ielasi’s stratagems always tending to the faultless functionality of the sonic organism. This is – weirdly – the best attribute and a noticeable limit of the album, which sometimes sounds too “smiling” to the ears in its total lack of emergency or dilemmas. Still, this is beyond doubt a lovely outing if you’re not looking for the excessive embitterment of an already complicated reality.