Bellows
Members: Nicola Ratti, Giuseppe Ielasi
Strand
rossing small sound science from Milan’s Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti, aka Bellows, one of our favourite production units now marking up another mesmerising addition to their frayed, knotty microcosmos of sounds following on from LP's for our own Boomkat Editions as well as the Latency, Senufo and Planam labels.
The thing that marks Bellows apart from many of their academic peers is their interest in bass dynamics. Theirs is a careful study of rhythmic and low-end propulsion at an almos…
Parallel / Grayscale
Parallel/Grayscale is the first collaborative work between Italian guitarist and composer Giuseppe Ielasi and French-Swiss composer and electroacoustic musician Kassel Jaeger. It is comprised of two different improvisation sessions. The first one took place in Paris, in October of 2011. The second happened in Oreno, in June of 2012, after the first concert Ielasi and Jaeger performed together. The first session was a pure analog device improvisation, whereas the second one was more laptop-o…
3 Pauses
Electronic music realised between 2014 and 2016, to be played at low volume...
Pressure Loss
**restocked** Nicola Ratti holds a rich history in the world of experimental and minimalist composition, having released music under his own name on labels such as Kning Disk, Anticipate, Preservation, Holidays, and Senufo Editions and in recent times concentrating his energy into his collaborative project ‘Bellows’, work which has seen the light thanks to Entr’acte Records and most recently Boomkat Editions. His latest solo work ‘Pressure Loss’ finds Ratti at a potential turning point in his mu…
Inventing Masks
Originally released in 2013, Error Broadcast re-issued ‘Stunt (Appendix)’ just recently (ebc028). After a hiatus of three years Inventing Masks is a new moniker the producer uses to publish his self-titled debut LP. ‘Inventing Masks’ comprises six concentric but slightly out-of-balance sound sculptures, equally inspired from generative composition, ambient music, and hip hop. "Inventing Masks can stand alongside some of the greatest loop-based records of the sampledelic era. Put a vocalist on to…
Wounded Boys
Bellows' Nicola Ratti investigates micro-rhythmic, electro-acoustic dub on solo terms with 'Wounded Boys' arriving in Where To Now?'s endless stream of ace new issues. Proceeding his pair of 12"s for Italy's Holidays Records in 2014, Ratti coalesces a more intimate, viscous sound on this outing, maybe best compared with the earliest Pole releases or Jan Jelinek abstractions. 'Elbow' nudges fidgety sparks and bass rubs in vast empty space; 'Wrist' flicks droplets and glassy tronics with wet sprin…
Rustl
Italian electro-acoustic maestros Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti, aka Bellows, serve an engrossing, labyrinthine LP of freeform concrète dub on our occasional Boomkat Editions label. 'Rustl' is Bellows' 4th album following a critically acclaimed trio of LP's released since 2007 for Entr'acte, Planam and Kning Disc, and also follows our last release by another Milanese artist, Lorenzo Senni, which was coincidentally also mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. In a slight change from their usual wo…
Resophonic
Welcome to the third installment in the 13 issues series. This time is the turn of Nicola Ratti from Milan, Italy, and Mark Templeton from Edmonton, Canada, whose musical work was mixed and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and is accompanied by pictures taken by Leanne Olson, also from Edmonton. Nicola Ratti began his musical career as guitar player. Lately his approach is more focused on beat-analog experimentation and sound installation. He is currently working with Giuseppe Ielasi, with whom he fo…
Ossario Volume I and II
** Edition of 300 copies on opaque white vinyl in printed clear PVC sleeves ** This is a true sensation: a masterful album released as a double 12" (available separately) housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve, on white vinyl; a steely, scratchy looping expansion form the backbone, tension, haunting layers of undertones combined with dark, spectral murmurings...Outstanding! "Through the use of sound generated from modular synthesizer, tapes and samples Nicola Ratti Ossario is a collection of ten …
Quarry
*Limited to 200 copies* "Quarry is the latest chapter in the ongoing collaboration between the London-based composer-performer of musique concrète Adam Asnan and the Italian sound artist and mastering engineer Giuseppe Ielasi. As the title may suggests, this encounter produced a dusty sculpture whose shape was only drafted immediately after the stone has been excavated from the ground, and where it is hard to distinguish the acousmatic touch of Asnan from the rhythmic textures of Ielasi. "It ven…
Holiday for Sampler
** One-time pressing edition limited to 250 copies. ** In April 2011 Giuseppe Ielasi and Andrew Pekler met for a three day recording session at Pekler's studio in Berlin. In a comfortable atmosphere and with a minimum of preparation, the two artists endeavored to find common musical ground through their shared interests in sample manipulation, layering the texture and improvisation. Some months later Ielasi auditioned the recordings and then mixed down his favorite passages. To a few of these se…
Reelin
Limited edition of 250 copies in a deluxe LP with embossed lettering and printed inner. Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti reconvene their wonderfully enigmatic Bellows project with a ghostly album for Entr'acte. 'Reelin'' is the third document of their hardware-honed endeavours, and much like their eponymous debut on Kning Disk and celebrated side for Planam, we're left with little background info other than their equipment list. Navigating between a CDJ/Sony Walkman/Revox A77/Memory Man, they cr…
Rhetorical islands
Original materials produced for an untitled piece commissioned by Jérôme Noetinger for l’Audible Festival, Paris 2011. A few sounds taken from the ’15cds’ tape, released on Entr’acte. Recomposed, mixed and mastered in Dec. 2012.Letterpress sleeve printed by Ben Owen / Middle Press.
Rudimenti
Masterpiece! "It’s overwhelming. Electroacoustic/acousmatic/gaussian/binaural/phantom organ/air conditioner pioneers Entr’acte have just simultaneously tossed out so many new releases that it’s difficult to know where to start. The only means to resolve this complex decision is to turn to my Metro horoscope, which tells me that I should consider listening to more Giuseppe Ielasi. It’s such a useful, UK-wide public-transport-based newspaper sometimes.In this release, Ielasi is taking a well-earne…
Streengs
‘Streengs’ is Nicola Ratti’s fifth solo cd, and it showcases a completely new direction in his work. Using a minimal setup composed of a small analog synthesizer and a delay/looping device, amplified with two audio transducers placed on the strings of a grand piano, Ratti managed to create a very complex and dense soundworld. Every piece was recorded in realtime, during a residency at Hotel Pupik, Schrattenberg, in July 2011, allowing the sounds from the surroundings to interfere wi…
Untitled 2011
*Limited edition of 350 copies in a vacuum packed metallic foil packaged with embossed lettering* Giuseppe Ielasi - sound artist, mastering engineer, label owner, half of Bellows - presents his most substantial solo release since 2009s 'Aix' for 12k with this untitled collection for London's Entr'acte. The eight unmarked tracks were produced in Spring/Summer 2011 and, much like his other work, would appear to be concerned with the minutiae and textured infidelities of the recording proces…
Reelin'
*Limited edition of 350 copies in a vacuum packed metallic foil packaged with embossed lettering* Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti reconvene their wonderfully enigmatic Bellows project with a ghostly album for Entr'acte. 'Reelin'' is the third document of their hardware-honed endeavours, and much like their eponymous debut on Kning Disk and celebrated side for Planam, we're left with little background info other than their equipment list. Navigating between a CDJ/Sony Walkman/Revox A77/Me…
Cathode Deafness
Two cathode ray tube televisions , a tape loop and an echo-looper pedal. The intent is to explore through the two televisions the emptied ether due to the shifting of the TV channels from the aerial signal to the digital . The CRT television becomes a deaf machine, an end in itself, a sort of "bachelor machine". The recordings are the result of a series of live improvisations
15 More Tapes
"15 more tapes" is a suite of 15 short pieces, very different in character and dynamics, edited from improvisations on various tape machines. The music was recorded during the year 2009, and then edited, recomposed and mastered in vimercate in summer 2011. Artwork by Alessandro Brivio. Limited edition of 90 copies.