Vital Weekly (NL)

A big smile of excitement and surprise turned upon my face when I opened the 12k parcel (when they arrive they get opened and played first): Giuseppe Ielasi on 12k. Now that’s a surprise. I can’t say why exactly, maybe it was always coming, but after the recent bunch of new talent, it’s perhaps the surprise of seeing an arrived musician at 12k. Ielasi’s tracks still clock in at somewhere between six and eight minutes, but unlike his previous releases, he has five instead of four. I kinda suspect Ielasi to like the good old vinyl album length approach. Ielasi plays his favorite instruments again: the guitar of course, piano, hammond organ, dobro, synthesizers and shortwave and he’s out to teach us lesson. The lesson being that you don’t need a laptop only to make warm glitchy music. His guitar playing is anything but a guitar, but in stead he plays long form drones. On the other instruments he also creates a large humming and droning stream of sounds, which is densely layered together with phase shifting patterns. Slow, but always on the move. Where there is room, Ielasi throws in some delay. Yet there is never a muddy sound, and everything remains crystal clear. Following his previous solo releases on Sedimental and Häpna, this is another fine addition to his catalogue. (FdW)