OUT OF THE BOX #14
Giuseppe Ielasi (2013)
Out of the Box is an irregular series focusing on seven inch records. It’s an excuse to engage with my collection in a new way, as well as to write about older records and genres we don’t often cover at ACL.
OUT OF THE BOX #14
Giuseppe Ielasi ~ Stunt (Appendix) (2013)
Hopefully you’ve been enjoying our annual End of Year lists, which always tend to bring an influx of new Listeners. So, if that’s you, welcome! Now that the Top 20 is out, we’ll be taking a bit of a holiday break (save for a special post or two) until the New Year. But I wanted to sneak in one last Out of the Box before then. This one is Stunt (Appendix), a triple 7” box set released by Holidays Records from one of my favorite artists, Giuseppe Ielasi.
Ielasi’s work should be familiar to our readers, as a solo artist, prolific collaborator, mastering engineer, and as a label curator. Longtime Listeners might remember that Ielasi’s 2023 LP Down On Darkened Meetings (Black Truffle) was well received on our 2023 End of Year lists.
Giuseppe Ielasi was the subject of the sixth installment of Sound Propositions in 2014, in which we discussed his influences, creative practices, and aesthetic and ethical commitments. We also briefly discussed his interest in hip hop and turntablism. These three 7” records, an appendix to his Stunt series, represent a bridge between his earlier experiments and his later work as Inventing Masks. I acquired this box set shortly after publishing that interview, I believe directly from the artist, alongside some private press CD releases he was doing at the time featuring experiments with small motors. There’s a humility in Ielasi’s work alongside a formal seriousness. Ielasi’s work isn’t driven by high concept. Though each work stakes out a conceptual realm for exploration, ultimately he is a sophisticated artist who creates work to be listened to. In no way sentimental, the impact of Ielasi’s work is felt, not apprehended.
Ielasi’s influence is not confined to his own production as an artist. He’s become the go-to mastering house for many other innovative artists, in his native Italy and beyond. Even before moving to Milano as a teenager he was booking and promoting concerts in his hometown of Reggio-Calabria, deep in the rural and culturally isolated south of Italy. He didn’t cease his activities upon relocating to the big city but instead became more active, playing and booking concerts, running a book store and heading a series of boutique labels: Fringes, Bowindo, and Schoolmap. These labels showcased the work of some of Europe’s most interesting avant-garde composers, including David Toop and Eliane Radigue, as well as contemporary masters such as John Butcher, Annette Krebs, and Akira Rabelais. Ielasi’s latest label is Senufo Editions, in my opinion his strongest curation to date. Each release is limited to only a few hundred copies. Though the album art and design are always excellent, the absence of liner notes or inserts quietly insists that the music speak for itself. (I wrote about the return of Senufo after a hiatus back in 2017, and several of their post-hiatus releases up through 2020. The label was quiet since the pandemic, but did release a digital only release via Bandcamp earlier this year.)
Ielasi began his career in the early 90s as a guitar player in the European free improv scene, but has long since been known primarily as a deeply skilled producer of inventive elecroacoustic music. But how can one sum up the oeuvre of an artist like Giuseppe Ielasi?
Steeped in free improvisation and musique concrète, Ielasi’s creative output nonetheless defies any such categorizations. Much of his earlier work was ambient and textural, but over the years his compositions have come to focus more on spatialization and the materiality of sound. In 2003 Ielasi released Plans, his solo debut, and his work since seems to cluster into one of several distinct if occasionally overlapping projects. After Gesine (2005) and August (2009) pushed the ambient electroacoustic post-guitar concerto direction as far as he could take it, Ielasi began to pair down his tool kit and explore a more restrained process.
The Stunt trilogy [Stunt (2008), (Another) Stunt (2009), and (third) Stunt (2010)] explored rhythm most explicitly, and remain extraordinary for their humanity and accessibility even among similar works of turntablism. But Ielasi’s turntable experiments are only one manifestation of his rhythmic prowess, also documented in the grid-based compositions of Aix (2009) and the object-studies of Tools (2010), and even his sampler-based work with Andrew Pekler, Holiday for Sampler (2013). Ielasi listens carefully to the timbral qualities of his samples, and his compositions are guided in part by the morphology of each sound.
Ultimately Ielasi’s turntable experiments are a fitting homage to his interest in hip-hop, while remaining true to his own influences and devising techniques to suit his material. In 2016, Ielasi adopted the moniker Inventing Masks, collecting tracks that are more explicitly rhythmic, sampled-based, and almost approaching a pop mode. Ielasi chose this new name in order to unite his more rhythmic, beat-related post-Stunt material, though he has continued to use his own name for other projects, which in recent years have been broadly characterized by a return to the guitar.
When Stunt (Appendix) was released, it seemed like just that, an appendix to a series that had come to an end. However, listening back now, it’s clearly a transitional record synthesizing Ielasi’s various rhythmic experiments, and sounds very much like a precursor to Inventing Masks. At the time Ielasi referred to the project as “a soulful jam for slippery dancefloors,” and that promise gets further explored in the two Inventing Masks LPs. Many times the 7” records I’ve chosen to focus on seem like inessential work or curiosities at best, but these three records are quite compelling on their own, even without representing a transitional period. Highly recommended.