Fabrizio Elvetico: piano, electronics, electric bass | Gianluca Paladino: guitar, samples | Pasquale Termini: cello, synthesizer | Agostino Mennella: drums, electronics
Several fine musicians have given their contribution to the album. Among them, some important international artists like: Mark Stewart(voice of Pop group and Maffia), Graham Lewis (voice and bass player of Wire), Rhys Chatham (avantgarde musician from New York), Salvatore Bonafede (one of the most well-known Italian Jazzists).
Tracklist: 1. Terminali (source) Download 2. Discentro 3. Ballrooms (vivify) 4. Bottom Sea Engine 5. Flying Home 6. Terminali (destination)
Composed and performed by Illàchime Quartet | Artistic and executive production: Fabrizio Elvetico | Front cover drawing: Chio Testa | Graphic studio: Etacom | Mixed by Giuseppe Pippo Barresi and I.Q. | Mastered by Giovanni Roma at Blackchannel Studio, Sirignano, Italy | Released by Fratto9 Under the Sky and Lizard Records.
click the cover to enlarge…
Illàchime Quartet is an instrumental ensemble based in Naples (Italy) that joins electronics and acoustic instruments. It gathers sounds and noises from the surroundings as well as scattered fragments of acoustic memories, which form the texture for the interventions of the musicians along rough and terse lines, often improvised. Final target: to intrigue and to seduce the audience by means of an unconventional, highly kinematic sonic experience. This new album contains six tracks and a ghost track.
The band released its first album in 2004, then a contribute on the vol. 9 of Bip_Hop Generation Series (previous volumes of this compilation contained tracks by artists like Murcof, Scanner, Mira Calix, Phonem). Another release is planned for a compilation by the Dublin-based label Psychonavigation Records.
Download listen to Illàchime Quartet | Terminali (source)
Download
This download consists of one 72.87MB zip file containing the complete track list in 192kbps MP3 format along with album art in high resolution JPG format.
Sku: Fratto007
Many tendencies meet in the sound of the débutante Illàchime Quartet. They range from the classical, improvised or the ambient music to elements of minimalism and gothic suggestions. Making so various pulsions coexist requires instrumental magic, bent for composition, a good deal of unconsciousness but above all, it requires good taste. The founders of this project are Fabrizio Elvetico and Gianluca Paladino with the support of a team of collaborators. Thanks to their academic (the first one) and rock-influenced (the second one) backgrounds, the music of Illàchime Quartet boasts different artistic feelings that interpenetrate without changing radically their own essence. On this point it is important to consider the cohabitations realized in Cortile in Mockba and in Pale Fire representing a sort of math-rock whose pulsions to progressive flights find their well-balanced limit in the dialogues between cello and guitar but also in the successful piano understatement. The album is rich in samplings got in a Moscow palace or in an industrial area as well as in a silos or listening to a valve radio. Inspired by a container for the storage of wheat, the masterpiece of the album Silos reflects the building of a magic structure where all the joints are tinged with electronic-glitch incandescences. The result is a very evocative kinematical development.
– Stefano I. Bianchi, Blow Up Magazine, number 76, september 2004. http://www.blowupmagazine.com
The music experimentation and, at the same time, the purpose to make all the different artistic feelings coexist is not easy. The worst thing that can happen is to make a synthesis and, as a result, to obtain an hybrid creature. This is a risk that the two musicians Fabrizio Elvetico and Gianluca Paladino (assisted by Carlo Di Gennaro, Drummond Petrie e Mimmo Fusco) prevent very easily. It may be for a clear account or just for a magic alchemy, anyway all the pulsions that move this project come out without efforts and they easily become music. Even if this is neither classical nor rock music, neither minimalism nor pure improvisation, the Illàchime Quartet’s sound holds all these tendencies in itself. The album is rich in samplings and glitches as well as placid piano chords while some ambient suggestions evolve in fascinating kinematical progressions. It might seem just a meaningless pastiche, but in spite of all you can catch a very solid balance in this project.
— Guido Siliotto, il Tirreno, september 2004. http://www.iltirreno.quotidianiespresso.it
The Illàchime Quartet are a Naples based instrumental set up whose explorations into improvisation have pricked up the ears of various members of the musical cognoscenti, two of which notably contribute to this album. Opening with “Terminali (Source)”, an instrumental that somehow treads the tightrope between the tranquil and the unsettling, the intense nature of the album is revealed with “Discentro” – featuring vocals and lyrics by the legendary Mark Stewart, towering above techno so ecstatically disjointed it could induce migraines on to the overly sensitive. Wire’s Graham Lewis (on “Ballrooms – Vivify”) projects the whole direction of the CD to an unnerving area – the composite of his bleak lyrics against the willfully uncomfortable musical backing from the quartet leaves a sensation akin to wandering into a deserted house where a recent unnatural death has occurred. The very nature of improvisational music compels it to either rise phoenix-like from the ashes, or spectacularly fall flat on its face – the latter emerging on “Flying Home” – where later on in the piece all elements of cohesion have appeared to have taken flight. Perversely, the standout track is hidden fifteen minutes into the final contribution – “Terminali (Destination)”. This “Ghost” track presents a more controlled, thematic thread to the album – and presents the quizzical novelty of having to fast forward to locate the pick of the bunch. An intriguing album – and not for the faint-hearted.
– Lee McFadden 12/4/09
Who are the Illàchime Quartet? Heirs of an intelligent progressive? Are they the representatives of a rock that spreads in all directions according to Zappa’s conception? Or maybe the King Crimson entangled as a cultural background? Jazz-rock as if the Canterbury school lesson didn’t leave a void? Classics fragments staggered all around? Soundtrack trip? I was surprised by the Illàchime Quartet. Listening to their music I found that it was made of heart, brain, structure, a touch of fantasy that has never done any harm, decadent atmospheres and a touch of sinister. They might not reach peaks of sales; it is likely that they will just appear on this magazine, but if in your opinion this way of being “retro” instead of “traditionalist” as it was for the Cerberus Shoal or for some Iceburn, has a reason to be, the Illàchime Quartet will certainly hit the target.
– Andrea Ferraris