3/4HadBeenEliminated

"3QuartersHadBeenEliminated" cd

01. Getsemany Fields under impossible rain
02. The soul of their suits
03. Standing Position
04. Memory Man
05. My Smallest Ego
06. Bench/Frozen
07. Bedrock

all tracks composed and recorded by
stefano pilia, claudio rocchetti and valerio tricoli
at "via paolo costa", bologna, italy
march|november 2003

more info: www.shiftingposition.org

The enigmatically named 3/4HadBeenEliminated are Stafano Pilia, Claudio Rocchetti and Valerio Tricoli.
The three are already known on the experimental electronic scene for their previous solo releases.
Pilia´s first solo "healing memories in present tension" out on the last visible dog ,shows his ability in combining psyco minimalist guitar drones with slow emotional riffs, while "the work called Kitano" (barlamuerte) -Rochetti´s debut album- reveals his personal collage style and wagnerian turntablism.
The composer Valerio Tricoli released his first work on bowindo last year "Did I? Did They?" unveling the paranoid intimate poetic of his concrete electroacoustic composition.
Throughout this 7 track work - the listener could easily think of as a 45 minute suite- the collaboration of the three seems to be more fruitful in asking useless questions rather than giving useless answers. Listening and attention move without interruption through different levels of reality and fiction (is memory real? is disneyland real? is this cd real? and what about its content?).
Diverse and distant elements - alchemically woven from the livily editing- find here the right collocation.
Fed from the purest field recording and layered drone and moving from transhumane electronics to pop attitude, the wonderful soundscape of 3/4 unveils intimacy and distance, entchantment and disillusion.

ReViews:

This awkwardly named ensemble is the collaboration between three of Bowindo's central players and co-founders, Stefano Pilia, Claudio Rocchetti, and Valerio Tricoli. The latter's Did They Did I? is one of the young label's best releases so far, and his comrades are no strangers within the budding Italian scene, Pilia with a CDR of beautiful droning guitar pieces on the Last Visible Dog label and Rocchetti with at least one lauded recording as Kitano. And while it might not be appropriate to call this disc the work of a "supergroup," as the sixth and latest Bowindo release it feels, at least, like the label's first truly essential product, the trio matching each other's talents to create a seven-part cycle of radiant acoustic imagery. 3/4HadBeenEliminated's 45 minutes unfurl in a graceful, gripping sweep that combines the Italians' tendencies towards lyrical improvisation and colorful electroacoustics, with a grounding in the kind of baroque assemblage techniques championed by people like Dean Roberts and Jim O'Rourke. It is a roomy collage of found sounds, entranced piano and strings, featherweight percussion, and the small-yet-tactile electronic manipulations most Bowindos manage with the such grace. Whole tracks are swallowed within drones of unquenchable warmth, carryovers from Pilia's Healing Memories record but without as grand a presentation, suggesting rather the distant, saturated golds of a Klimt painting. As with previous Bowindo releases, field recordings get incorporated in such a way that they guide or introduce certain portions of the piece rather than float along as surface filler, a subtle but effective way of carving an environment from the work itself. The result is the same kind of unreal ambience labelmate Guiseppe Ielasi regularly produces, an unpredictable landscape that reveals, only in afterthought (or aftershock), the rigorous method of its creation. At points during the disc a beautiful chamber ensemble emerges, picking apart minimal, plaintive lines, as if at the cue of a particular broken glass or cheap electronic whine. The effect of this invented troupe of players, slinking ghostly between so many golden guitar drones, sheets of harmonium haze, and assorted earthen resonance, only to appear with the arbitrary quickness of a twig snapping underfoot, is simply breathtaking, many listens over. "Bedrock" travels from a tender, big-band shuffle sounding almost like the Bad Seeds at their most sublime, to a lengthy area of abrasive shatter and pop, garage ambience that still manages to feel like just another station along the disc's narrative. When the associative strains of guitar and percussive foundations disappear, more discrete patterning of electrical hums, engine turnovers, and minor tape treatments become attempts at maintaining the momentum and sonic density of a particular moment, a method aimed at continuity rather than clash, and one that helps to create an incredibly fluid sound-world, full of juxtapositions, but ones which provide an indecisive magical middle passage. It's rare that works this complex also succeed in feeling as direct, regardless of particular directives changing with each listen, a compliment that can be paid to most of the Bowindo/Fringes releases I've heard. Discovering this label has been a joy, and both of its 2004 releases will rank among my favorites for the year. -( Andrew Culler, Brainwashed.com)

3/4 HadBeenEliminated is a trio formed by Stefano Pilia (a solo cd on Last Visible Dog), Claudio Rocchetti (two releases on Bar La Muerte - see archive - and S'Agita) and Valerio Tricoli (a cd on Bowindo, plus collaborations and productions with Dean Roberts etc.). Not sure about who plays what, but listed sources are "guitars, harmonium, double bass, percussion, glass harmonica, resonant pipes, objects, turntables, synthesizer, tapes, electronics, field recordings", with help from Antonio Albanese (percussion and glass harmonica) and Tony Arrabito (drums). I regret not having seen 3/4... in one of their recent tour dates, because they must be pretty explosive live. This eponymous cd has its better moments when the electroacoustic scrabblings, the gigantic harmonium drones and some serene, almost bucolic guitar strumming converge: tracks like "Getsemany Fields under impossible rain", "The soul of their suits" and "Bedrock" are nothing short of moving. Strangely enough, I always get the impression that this is a quiet cd - on the contrary, 3/4...'s intimism also has its psychic black holes, like the ominous, monumental drone of "My smallest ego" and the electronic hoarfrost of "Bench/Frozen". But the trio has a somehow more humane, "folk" approach to minimalism and microsounds - there's often a feel of open spaces here. Great stuff indeed, also because it doesn't fossilize on a pre-digested set of sounds, but rather dares to fuck around and sweat on them. Along with the Dielectric Minimalist All Stars (with whom they share at least a similar approach to playing/recording), this is one of the best experimental releases that I've come across recently. A new cd is due out on S'Agita, and Logoplasm are definitely another valid "spiritual comparison" to 3/4...'s romantic electroacoustics.4 out of 5. (Eugenio Maggi, Chaindlk.com)

Working with guitars, harmonium, bass, percussion, glass harmonica, resonant pipes, turntables, synthesizer and other diverse electronic objects and treatments, the trio of Stefano Pilia, Claudio Rocchetti and Valerio Tricoli, under the curious appellation 3/4HadBeenEliminated (three quarters of what?) are, to quote their press release, better at "asking useless questions rather than giving useless answers". Tricoli's elusive montage of field recordings (cf. last year's Did I? Did They?) combines with Pilia's fondness for extended guitar drones (Healing Memories In Present Tension on Last Visible Dog) and Rochetti's "Wagnerian turntablism" (here I'm quoting from the PR as I haven't heard his work before) to produce a very listenable and predominantly tonal album but one that, once more, won't be pigeonholed (hooray). Instead of worrying about which shelf to put it on, enjoy the album's many irresistibly beautiful moments, from the gentle triple time guitar chipped away by field recordings on "The soul of the suits" - maybe that's the 3/4 that has been eliminated - via the distant children's voices and drones of "Memory Man" to the disarmingly simple acoustic balladry that closes "My smallest ego." For some reason, Gastr del Sol comes to mind. Don't be fooled though into thinking it's a turn-on-tune-in-switch-off thing: there are plenty of odd twists and turns - the disconcerting thuds and rips in "Bench / Frozen" are superb - the most surprising perhaps being the appearance of a real twanging binary groove in "Bedrock". But of course it doesn't end up going where you'd expect it to - the final minutes of the album sound like someone smashing up an abandoned warehouse. Fascinating, inscrutable and highly recommended (Dan Warburton, PAris Transatlantic).

A formare questo progetto dal nome quanto meno insolito, sono tre compositori italiani assurti alla ribalta nei circuiti dell’elettronica di ricerca per le ottime prove soliste da loro pubblicate lo scorso anno. Stefano Pilia, autore di "Healing memories in present tension" (Last Visibile Dog), Claudio Rocchetti, messosi in evidenza con "The work called Kitano" (Bar la Muerte) e Valerio Tricoli, la mente dietro "Did I? Did They?" (Bowindo) dimostrano nelle sette tracce di questo cd come anche in musica l’unione possa fare la forza, sovrapponendo le loro istanze particolari in modo del tutto integrato e compatibile. La fusione dei droni minimali in lenta evoluzione di Pilia, con i collage espressionisti di Rocchetti e le composizioni elettroacustiche di Tricoli genera una sorta di sinfonia elettronica in grado di gettare uno sguardo a tutto tondo sulle tendenze più recenti in ambito elettronico (e rock).
"Getsemany Fields", il primo brano, inizia con scariche di glitch che lasciano il posto a inquietanti sibili spettrali e a un finale serenamente disteso che introduce il brano successivo. “The Soul of their suits” è l’episodio più accessibile del disco, ma anche quello più sapientemente elaborato, nel quale entrano in gioco anche strumenti tradizionali, come un placido arpeggio acustico o un harmonium che si distende in un flusso sonoro in lenta modulazione. Questo strumento ritorna (forse) anche in “My smallest ego”, il pezzo che preferisco, un esperimento sulle trame sonore, un drone organico e monolitico che, per quanto mutuato dalla psichedelia shoegazing, se ascoltato a volume sostenuto, riesce ad elevarsi a una maestosità quasi wagneriana.
“Standing position” e “Bedrock” sono le composizioni che più di tutte si fondano sulla manipolazione di suoni concreti. Il secondo, soprattutto, con i suoi undici minuti di atmosfere ambientali, echi cosmici, scariche elettriche e vetri calpestati dimostra come sia possibile creare da fonti ostiche e devianti una forma musicale accessibile e articolata che coinvolga emotivamente l’ascoltatore. In questo mare di rumori molesti non identificati è proprio un intervallo di convenzionale folk-acustico il vero “ribelle”, fuori posto e disadattato, per quanto nella realtà dei fatti risulti perfettamente inserito nel suo “sistema” musicale.
In generale, a impressionare è la capacità degli autori di produrre materiali apparentemente imprevedibili, ma che dimostrano, ad un ascolto approfondito, un’attenta e calibrata costruzione. Ad essere determinanti per il valore di questo cd sono un approccio emotivo ai microsuoni e, ovviamente, una spiccata sensibilità nella loro sovrapposizione, a dimostrazione del fatto che possono cambiare gli stili e gli strumenti, ma ciò che fa la differenza tra buona e cattiva musica è sempre lo stesso. 5 out of 5 (Massimiliano Osini, Rockit)

3/4 had been eliminated are Stefano Pilia, Claudio Rocchetti and Valerio Tricoli.
Comprised of a large number of instruments (guitars, harmonium, double bass, percussion, glass harmonica, resonant pipes, objects, turntables, synthesizer, tapes, electronics and field recordings) this CD is, as expected from such a list of sound sources, large in sound.
The layered sounds is mixed at times with sweet guitar loops and interesting environmental backgrounds as heard in track two - The soul of their suits. This track builds and builds on concrete sounds and drones into something quite unusual.
More experimental tracks are filled with small sounds and delicate tones as in track four - Memory Man. This CD is not predictable at all. Most of what happens half way through a track is totally unexpected and often a pleasant surprise. The field recordings add a touch of the surreal to things.
Track five is possibly one of the most unusual with a build of sound eventually fading out and leading to what sounds like a couple of saxophones (although not listed) and somebody singing. Totally disjointed but clever and different.
Overall this is a very exciting mixture of everything you could and couldn't imagine. Truly unique. (Phosphor magazine).