OUT OF THE BOX #15

Enrico Malatesta (2012)

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
Enrico Malatesta ~ Bestiario vol. 2 (2012)

In May 2019 I attended a workshop with Nuova Superficie, a live reel-to-reel tape and percussion duo comprised of Giovanni Lami and Enrico Malatesta, in which they performed in the garden courtyard of IUAV in Venice and explained their practice to a group of students. I’d previously interviewed Lami and written about many of his projects, and had come to know Gio well by this point, but my only previous encounter with Enrico was when I narrowly missed seeing him perform in a loft in Montreal years earlier. Maybe the show was cancelled, or maybe I had a scheduling conflict, I can’t recall. But I’d been a fan of Malatesta’s singular music from at least the moment I first heard this seven inch, Bestiario Vol. 2, released by the venerable Senufo Editions in 2012.

That afternoon in the courtyard I gained additional insight into Malatesta’s practice, watching him coax small sounds from objects including a pine cone, some sticks, a rock, and a thin snare drum. I’ve always been a fan of solo percussionists, and have argued often that percussionist make for some of the most interesting composers and improvisers due to their unique role in performance ensembles granting them an architectural insight into musical structure. As part of the workshop, Enrico explained to IUAV students his philosophy of sound, pursuing the pleasant thud of wood on stone, repeating and iterating into a hypnotic sequence that shares as much with drone as traditional rhythm. It may have also been that day that I first learned that the esteemed composer Éliane Radigue had written a piece for him, Occam Ocean-Occam XXVI.

Since 2001, long before the rise in profile that has accompanied the release of many previously unavailable works and buttressed by feminist historians who have challenged the omission of female composers from the canon of electronic music, the French composer retired her signature Arp 2500 modular synthesizer and ceased working with electronics and tape in favor of writing compositions specifically for musicians and their acoustic instruments, in the form of a composition that is transmitted orally (and aurally) by Radigue herself to the performer, and which is unique to the relationship between each individual musician and instrument. Just as tape affords additional textural and pitch complexities to electronically synthesized sounds, the attention on acoustic sounds grants new complexity to Radigue’s meditative approach to slowly evolving sonic complexity. Her Occams, as they’re called, have proven themselves as rich as her earlier works, if not more so, and have been met with widespread critical acclaim. Malatesta’s inclusion in the Occams is testament to his unique talents as a percussionist, and Occam XXVI is a unique installment in Radigue’s oeuvre. That said, as a composition for bowed cymbals, the work is unmistakably her work. It’s yet to be released in a definitive recordings, but various live performances are available.

Back in 2011, however, when I first encountered Malatesta’s work, I was initially drawn in by the labels and artists he was associated with (as well as the fact that his name recalls the famous Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, who has long been of interest to me). Bestiario vol.1 was released on Second Sleep in 2010, the same year that saw a collaborative tape with Swiss drummer Christian Wolfarth on Lorenzo Senni’s Presto!? Malatesta’s earliest release was 2009’s Standard tape, on the same label. In lieu of track titles, the tape lists the start time of individual pieces (ie. 00' 00", 08' 33", etc), so it was unsurprising to find him working alongside figures like Giuseppe Ielasi.

Regular Listeners will already know of my deep appreciation for the work of Giuseppe Ielasi. Ielasi and Jennifer Veillerobe’s Senufo Editions is one of those labels I will buy anything they put out, though there are still a few gaps in my collection, and especially from this time (I was even more broke than usual during those years). I routinely listened to everything that was available on their Bandcamp page, and the more rhythmic work of Alessandro Brivio and Enrico Malatesta stood out to me as particularly exceptional. Malatesta also released Rudimenti, a collaboration with Ielasi released on the great Entr’acte label, around this time, and those years 2011-2012 remain a high point for both labels.

Rudimenti means rudiments, presumably a reference to drum rudiments, the small patterns that are combined to create more complex rhythms. Ielasi pairs small electric motors and field recordings against Malatesta’s percussion, and while the CD consists of one 26 minute track, it’s clearly made up of discreet parts or movements itself. In 2014 Malatesta released collaborations with other likeminded artists including Luciano Maggiore—Talabalàcco and Talladura—and with Rutger Zuydervelt, along with Gareth Davis—for the former’s four channel installation IJstijd, released in a stereo edition as a 6-minute infinite cassette loop. That same year saw the release of Aliossi on Senufo, another 26-minute CD but this time a solo work, using simple gestures and polyrhythms to explore the possibilities of percussion.

I understood Malatesta’s work as a manifestation of European post-electroacoustic improv that at that time seemed to be moving away from explicit instrumentation, working in a minimal, almost formalist but still playful mode of expression and attention to the minutiae of sonic detail. When working with Maggiore, the pair eschewed the practice of duo improvisation, intentionally subverting the idiomatic language that had ironically developed within “free” impov over the decades. They did so by recording their parts separately and then composing with fragments from those individual sessions.

In contrast, the short Bestiario seven inches, of which there are three volumes, are idiosyncratic works for solo percussion. All were recorded live, with no overdubs or edits, and are designed to showcase the spatiality of sound as it relates in particular to rhythm and texture. Sonic materiality is at the heart of Malatesta’s work. If you’ve yet to encounter his work, I hope Bestiario vol 2. makes for a fine introduction. Happy listening.