Giuseppe Ielasi

Issued in 2008 as the first installment of a three-part series, Stunt marks a striking departure for Giuseppe Ielasi. Best known up to that point for the patient ambient and electroacoustic work on labels like Häpna and 12k, Ielasi sets aside guitars and field recordings here in favour of a single tool: one turntable, and a large pile of vinyl records.

The six pieces collected on this 12" were assembled over three months from short segments, loops, and longer improvisations drawn directly from the platter, a technique closer to hip-hop turntablism, with its emphasis on the audible physical gesture, than to the more anthropological cut-and-paste of plunderphonics. The hands-on process remains audible throughout. What emerges, surprisingly, are tracks whose structural logic sits much closer to skeletal house and asymmetric cold funk than to anything in Ielasi's previous catalogue - pulses and rhythms become the organising principle, repetition and variation held in careful balance.

Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin, the EP was followed by (Another) Stunt in 2009 and (Third) Stunt on Dekorder, completing one of the more quietly singular trilogies in recent Italian experimental music.