Andrea Belfi / David Grubbs / Stefano Pilia Trio + Scott Haggart

Sat 04 Apr, 2009, 8pm
($10 - 8) All-Access
Old American Can Factory

Andrea Belfi was born in Verona in 1979. He is a drummer and an electro-acoustic musician. He started studying drums at the age of 14, and has featured in various punk/hardcore bands ever since. Studied contemporary art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. He’s co-founder of Rosolina Mar, an instrumental rock trio with which he played over 200 gigs, as well as the backing band of the singer Larkin Grimm for her 2008 Italian tour. He’s one half of the duo Christa Pfangen, with which he released the album “Watch me getting back the end” (Die Schachtel 2008). He collaborates also with the super 8 film archives association Homemovies, in many audio/visual projects (Stillivingrooms, Circo Togni, Catherine). Since 2003 Belfi has been developing a solo liveset, where he uses his drummer’s skills along with the results of his long-time researches with electro-acoustic devices and synthesizers.

His solo album Between Neck & Stomach was released in September 2006 by the Swedish label Hapna. He has toured Europe presenting it in Stockholm, Paris, Gent, London, Geneva, Berlin and many other cities. His last solo record, ,Knots, has been released by Die Schachtel records in January 2008. He played it as a live set in Turin (Artissima 2007), Chicago (Lampo), Aalst (Netwerk), Bruxelles (Klara festival 2008), Stockholm, Oslo. Andrea’s constant concern and interest, as one can clearly see from the whole of his work, is the live and performative moment, constantly treated and re-shaped in different and challenging ways. He has played and collaborated with Giuseppe Ielasi, ¾hadbeeneliminated, Damo Suzuki, Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham, Nicola Ratti, Dean Roberts, Atelier MTK(Metamkine), Zimmerfrei, Stefano Pilia, Ignaz Schick, Å, Werner Dafeldecker, Claudio Rocchetti, Xavier Garcia Bardon (aka Saoule), Valerio Tricoli, Alessandro Bosetti, Xabier Iriondo, Mattia Coletti, Renato Rinaldi, Larkin Grimm.
http://www.chocolateguns.com/
http://myspace.com/andreabelfi

David Grubbs has released ten full-length solo albums and appeared on more than 100 commercially-released recordings. In 2000, his album The Spectrum Between was named “Album of the Year” in the London Sunday Times. He was a founding member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, Squirrel Bait, and the Wingdale Community Singers, and has participated in the Red Krayola since 1993. He directs the Blue Chopsticks record label.

Grubbs contributed music with Matmos for Thierry Jousse’s 2005 feature film Les Invisibles. He composed the soundtracks for Angela Bulloch’s film installations Z Point and Horizontal Technicolour. His music appears in two installations by Doug Aitken, and his own sound installation Between a Raven and a Writing Desk was included in the 1999 group exhibition “Elysian Fields” at the Centre Pompidou. He is a 2005-6 grant recipient in Music-Sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Grubbs is Assistant Professor of Radio and Sound Art in the Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College, CUNY. He has been called one of two “Best Teachers for an Indie-Rocker to Admire” in the Village Voice and “le plus Français des Américains” in Libération.

Stefano Pilia was born in Genoa in 1978. He lives and works in Bologna. Electro-acoustic composer and multi-instrumentalist who has released various recordings with both Italian and foreign labels (LastVisibleDog, Hapna, Sedimental, Die-Schachtel, Soleilmoon), has toured Europe and the USA, collaborating with artists as well as musicians and bands (Phill Niblock, Marina Rosenfeld, Medves, Mudboy, Black Forest Black Sea, Stefano Tedesco, Manuel Mota, David Maranha, Rhys Chatam, Saoule, Dean Roberts, Giuseppe Ielasi, Metamkine…). His work has become progressively concerned with the research of the sculptural dimensions of sound and its relations with space both through instrumental executional practices and investigations into the recording and production process. He is one of the founder members of 3/4HadBeenEliminated, a synthesis between improvisation, electro-acoustic composition and avant-rock sensibilities. He generally plays live as solo and with 3/4HadBeenEliminated, recently with Massimo Volume and frequently collaborates on the sound-tracking (both live and on CD/video) for the productions of theater, movies, dance and contemporary arts companies (Zimmerfrei, Wu Ming 2, Homemovies, Balletto Civile…)
www.myspace.com/stefanopilia
www.shiftingposition.org

Scott Haggart’s performance will further expand his DISKONO 017 12” record using a customized Califone Turntable and introduce/improvise preempted extracts of both analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog edits of DISKONO 017. The audience will also be provided an open-access broadcast quality turntable setup by default to play the said record backwards.

The original edit is “psychotopologically derived from a 0.7 millisecond recorded extract of a DISKONO performance (2000).” Obsessively and secretly expanded is a 0.7-millisecond sound into a 1:17 second composition that took many years to superimpose and further re-sample the original fragment into a strict bombardment of fractal concrete sound. Within a “tradition of discrete spectrality” and with the satisfactory feeling brought about by orchestrating a 1:17 second work, it became inevitable for Scott to extend the invitation to six others thus creating alternate versions (seven in total) using the original as source material/inspiration. Strict adherence was required by the invited artists Lary Seven, EVOL, Felix Kubin, White Daughter, Charlie McAlister, and Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen to a rule of such versions being 1:17 seconds in duration so as to absurdly explore the potentials of this 0.7-millisecond sound. – DISKONO

“Here the label’s taking a decidedly different direction… this one’s all DISKONO member Scott Haggart doing an art-record consisting of a one-minute [seventeen-seconds] conceptual piece on the a-side (cut mid-record for maximum [sonic] effect), then a series of re-workings of said by Lary Seven, EVOL, Felix Kubin, White Daughter, Charlie McAlister, and Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen on the flip… Where the original is a statically-charged burst of raw electricity, the reworkings take in just about every conceivable sound-alteration method; from Lary Seven’s “magnetic” reworking to EVOL’s woozy sliding pitch-scale, to Felix’s crackling chatter.”
– Keith Fullerton Whitman

Founded in the spring of 1998 and described as a “a Scottish multi media cabal masquerading as a record label,” DISKONO was initially based in Central Scotland but befitting its constitution as a complex carbohydrate, the constituent pieces of its chemical structure are now strewn all over the globe; New York, London, Brussels, etc. The known and affiliated elements of DISKONO were/are Klaus Oldanburg, Ruth Random, Findo Gask, Dr. Barnes Advocaat, Gunter Saxenhammer, Ttocshagg Forfib, Joel Ongthorne, Kosten Koper; although these may be pseudonyms for the same person or persons. Together or alone, they/he/she operate a record label releasing sound art & “avant-garde flicks of the wrist” as well as curated savory and pretentiously artistic projects such as the exhibition Revisionland by Alejandra and Aeron of Lucky Kitchen (which won an Award of Distinction in Digital Music at Prix Ars Electronia 2002) and physical remix series of 7″ records with Aerospace Soundwise, The British Composer of the Year Winner for Sonic Art (2008) Janek Schaefer. DISKONO also released music by figures such as Felix Kubin, Alejandra and Aeron, Pimmon, JaDa, People Like Us, Francisco Lopez, Boards Of Canada, Goodiepal, V/Vm, Hrvatski, Aavikko.”

“Diskono never ceases to amaze us with their activities” – Vital Weekly

“Diskono consciously foster the spirit of vigilance and insurrection, through inspired logical chicanery and stolen rhetoric from texts such as Guy Debord’s Society Of The Spectacle and Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution Of Everyday Life (in which the French commentator called, among other things, for revolution to rescue artistic creativity from the morally corrupting influence of commerce).” – The Wire