Wege translates as ‘path’ and it’s a fitting title for the latest rendering from master percussionist and experimental composer Andrea Belfi. The albums’ four pieces act as orientation points through some imaginary sonic landscape.
Wege is Belfi’s forth LP (the first with Room40), and stems entirely from compositions completed at two artist-in-residence projects in Austria (Hotel Pupik) and in Brussels (Q-O2 Werkplatz). The album is built around a cyclic electro-acoustic system, through which Belfi has developed a complex musical network of possibilities.
With this electro-acoustic system, influenced in part by Steve Reich’s ‘Pendulum Music’, Wege’s four pieces revolve around spiraling interconnections of synthesizer, feedback and drums. Belfi explains further:
“This device creates feedbacks on two drums on my drum kit, and I can modify it by stopping and stretching the drum skins with hands and various kinds of sticks, mallets and brushes, and/or by filtering the feedback with an a modular synthesizer.”
Edited in a quiet apartment in Greifswald (Germany) a small town on the Baltic Sea, the record bears marks of the stillness of the surroundings in which it was finalised. There is a sense of hushed awe and a subtle reference to the wind swept coldness of the landscape in these pieces.
Wege is mastered and mixed by Giuseppe Ielasi.
With this electro-acoustic system, influenced in part by Steve Reich
credits
All compositions by Andrea Belfi
Recorded by Ludo Engels at Q-O2 Werkplatz, Brussels, October 2009
Additional recordings by Andrea Belfi, Greg Haines, Valerio Tricoli, Stefano Tedesco, Rutger Zuydervelt, Massimo Carozzi, Attila Faravelli
Edited by Andrea Belfi
Mixed by Andrea Belfi and Giuseppe Ielasi
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi March 2011
Design by Hartebeest
Impossible without: Ann Goossens, Julia Eckhardt, Ludo Engels, Veronica Santini, Heimo Wallner
credits
released February 16, 2012
Andrea Belfi: drums, percussion, electronics
Valerio Tricoli: revox
Stefano Roveda: violin
Greg Haines: cello
Attila Faravelli: rotating speaker
Stefano Tedesco: vibraphone
Andrea Faccioli: slide guitar, acoustic guitar
Stefano Pilia: double bass
Stefano Roveda: violin
Machinefabriek: guitar
Josef Novotny, Jong Won Choi, Auriel Martin Reich, Johanna Lettmayer, Martin Zrost, Echo Ho, Manuel Giannini: words
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