Bellows
Members: Nicola Ratti, Giuseppe Ielasi
Effacing Colours, Barely Dancing
Born in 1974, Giuseppe Ielasi grew up in the south of Italy and now resides in the outskirts of Milano with his family. He has been making music and touring since the late nineties (he tours much less nowadays). He mostly plays solo, but also in Bellows (with Nicola Ratti), Rain Text (with Giovanni Civitenga) and in duos with Enrico Malatesta, Kassel Jaeger, Andrew Pekler and collaborates regularly with film-maker and photographer Armin Linke (also editing his films). He has released (short) rec…
Rhetorical Islands
Tip! First vinyl edition of the album Rhetorical Islands, originally released by Giuseppe Ielasi in 2012 as a limited-edition CD on his Senufo Editions label, with recordings made in 2011 as a commission for l’Audible Festival, Paris. The album’s ten tracks have neither titles nor accompanying text, standing for themselves as what Ielasi himself has called “isolated sound worlds”. They are nonetheless unparalleled in their plasticity, acoustic events with a rare degree of tangibility. Ielasi evo…
Down On Darkened Meetings
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Down On Darkened Meetings, the first solo release on the label from the quietly prolific Giuseppe Ielasi. Recorded at Ielasi’s studio in Monza outside of Milan over two days in February 2022, the seven pieces presented here continue the renewed exploration of the guitar that marks much of his solo work over the last few years. Emerging in the late 1990s as an improviser working primarily with prepared acoustic and electric guitars, the instrument became less …
Five Wooden Frames
*2023 stock* Five Wooden Frames marks the return of Italian artist Giueppe Ielasi to 12k after his captivating polyrhythmic explorations on Aix (12k1051, 2009). He completely abandoned the guitar in the mid 2000’s to explore minimal electro-acoustic abstractions (see his releases on his own Senufo Editions) or rhythmic and groove-based music (see his Stunt series, the Inventing Masks project, and Aix and Tools on 12k).
Once again, however, the guitar has become his main focus, both as an instrum…
The Prospect
*2023 stock* Giuseppe Ielasi is back following his 2020 release Five Wooden Frames. There he returned to the guitar exploring shifting and modulating loops and the interplay of tuning and drifting to create five stark yet ethereal pieces. On The Prospect, Ielasi sticks to solo guitar but this time in a much more pure form. Each of the two pieces consists of parallel electric guitar lines recorded simply through a tube amplifier free of studio tricks or heavy editing. Like much music written over…
Its Appearance, Reflected by Three Copies
* 6-panel digisleeve (coated 350gms cardboard). Edition of 200 * Electronic music, composed and mixed in May 2021. Original materials recorded in January 2018.
Palimpsests (LP)
Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi stunning collaborative album
Shinkai
** Hand stickered & stamped LP with lyric insert ** Five years after the release of ‘Pressure Loss’ the modern master of electronic minimalism Nicola Ratti returns to Where To Now? in collaboration with Japanese MC ‘MA’, for a suite of submerged, outsider Trip-Hop. ‘Shinkai’ meets at the crossroads of the gloomy sonic snapshot world of Tricky, the South London DIY avant pop bloom of Curl/Mica Levi, the outer fringes of Hip-Hop heralded by the Anticon crew, and the deep textured minimalism of Mac…
Framework 3
Danish musician/composer Mads Emil Nielsen continues his Framework series; a collection of open, hand-drawn graphic scores and recordings. Framework 3 is the latest instalment in Nielsen’s sequence of graphic scores and recordings. The series includes the Danish composer’s own subjective translations of visual materials and sound pieces accompanied by visual notations.
On this release he collaborates with Katja Gretzinger and Nicola Ratti. Published as a limited edition art print folder, Frame…
Undercurrent
Black Truffle announce Undercurrent, the new LP from the long-running Milanese duo of Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti. Following on from high-profile releases on Boomkat Editions and Shelter Press in the last few years, the eight untitled pieces making up Undercurrent continue the pair's hypnotic and disorientating practice of improvisation based on tape loops. Often sitting halfway between electro-acoustic technique and beat-based production, the music of Bellows obliquely recalls aspects of h…
MMXX Bundle #2
This special bundle collects the second five releases in the MMXX Series: Charlemagne PalestineJim O’RourkeSusana Santos SilvaKarbé DinelGiuseppe IelasiMatière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series. In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 great artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork. Throughout this year, each quarter will see the release of 5 new vinyls, available individually or as a bundle. Each record is limited at 500 copies and comes as a crystal clear …
MMXX-10
Matière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series. In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 great artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork. Throughout this year, each quarter will see the release of 5 new vinyls, available individually or as a bundle. Each record is limited at 500 copies and comes as a crystal clear vinyl featuring an original track of 20 minutes on one side, and a laser engraved artwork on the other. Each contained in a transparent sleeve printed w…
Aix
Aix is an outstanding piece of work by Italian electro-acoustic savant Giuseppe Ielasi, originally released in 2009 on Taylor Deupree's 12k label, the follow-up to 2007’s August (12k) and Ielasi's first collaboration with Nicola Ratti as "Bellows", also out in 2007 (Kning Disk). Originally only released on CD (12k), the album got a very limited vinyl issue on Czech label Minority Records in 2010. Keplar presents this extraordinary and timeless collection of 9 evocative minimalist soundscapes on …
Continental
**300 copies** Continental is the new full-length solo record by Milan-based multi-instrumentalist Nicola Ratti, following recent releases on Where to Now? and Room40. Conceived of by Ratti as a "series of big rooms or places to get lost in, full of small details and characterized each by a single flavor or perfume", it is a surprising and vibrant collection of music. Working with a palette of spare, expertly deployed percussive synthesis techniques, Ratti's work here is both labyrinthine and co…
Decouple Series
The first in a series of split vinyls concerning dependencies, miscommunication and increasing complexity in our media- saturated digital era. Georgia and Bellows inaugurate the decouple ][ series with works between futuristic eclecticism and avant-garde pan-aesthetics, where musical themes flow tangentially. Similar, but without effectively engaging one another. A metaphor for a world of surfaces.Recorded in Georgia’s Chinatown NYC studio, ‘Tiwala sa buani’ abruptly throw us into freaky percuss…
Odd Doubt / Johnny Leech
Edition of 150 copies. Granny13 opens with Nicola Ratti's 'Odd Doubt'. With the use of a modular system and tape loops, a broken rhythm is obtained by parallelism between single sound signals as LFO one or processed tapes. On the second side, Giovanni Lami's 'Johnny Leech' is made with a small bunch of equipment, just a chaotic hand-made synth (cacophonator) and a memoryman, working mainly on static electricity and leakage current in the synth used without any kind of power supply.
Even when they speak of space
New Giuseppe Ielasi full lenght album. Music for whistling, microphone and digital degradation. Recorded in november 2016 and august 2017. to be played at low volume.
The Collection
From Nicola Ratti... "These recordings were made during a relatively long period of time, not continuously, over several months in my studio. Nothing was been planned in advance, not any idea of album or approach. Nevertheless I easily recognize myself in this material, moreover I recognize my working space itself. It's like taking a picture, or make a painting, of your personal room where all your stuff is well placed and, among them, their identities as sound sources and acoustic possib…
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…
