Written by: Jen Dan
Sicilian musician, sound engineer, and electro-acoustic composer Carlo Barbagallo will be releasing his experimental music album named iAmInTiLt,BoB! and subtitled Four Studies for Electric Guitar and Live Electronics, February 15th on CD and digital formats via his own label Noja Recordings.
Barbagallo is a prolific veteran artist who is also currently a member of the U.S. rock quartet Suzanne’Silver, experimental free improvisation trio LBB from Canada, and the Italian electro-acoustic collective CoMET.
Stereo Embers’ is please to present the premiere of iAmInTiLt,BoB! in its entirety. The album is a collection of four studies for electric guitar and live electronics that Barbagallo composed between the end of 2015 and the first months of 2016 for his postgraduate degree in ‘Electronic Music’.
Since 2012 and through the recording process of this LP, Barbagallo focused his compositional research around the following diverse topics: multi-channel acousmatic music, acoustic and electronic feedback, equipment and residual noise, dynamic environments for mixed music improvisation performances, improvisation and ‘programming-by-ear’ as composition techniques, algorithmic tools for transformational processes on texts which generates music scores and sounds, the aesthetic of ‘incomplete’ musical forms, collective based composition, and experimental integration between theatre and electro-acoustic music.
Here are some details about each study:
Study #1, “My Richness Is…”, is a twenty-minute speculation on producing no-input sound-like improvisations though the only use of a table-top electric guitar. The guitar here was conceived as an electro-acoustic source device in the same integrated plan with the analog processing devices and tools used. two free improvisation layers are simply mixed together to show the experimental approach to sound research in its total integrity. This composition is also represented by three other versions on the album.
Study #2 is a sort of haiku sound composition, a short poetic reflection around “Isolation, Absence, Denial”. Here the instrument is deprived of its characteristic device: the pickup. The LP contains the Barbagallo’s original and the versions of of Suzanne’Silver (Dario Serra, Francesco Accardi, and Mauro Felice), Kevin Thompson (Enablers), Virgile Abela (HoaxHoax), Tom De Testa (Burst), Valerio Vittoria (Calavera), Luca Morino (CoMET), and Edoardo Vogrig (Tweedo).
In Study #3 (“Wie Ein Naturlaut”) and Study #4 (“Untitled”), the electric guitar is inside a modular sound processing digital system. The complex network of interactions between the modules is controlled in real-time by the guitar sound parameters and triggered by Barbagallo through foot-controllers.
Almost all sounds in the piece are guitar sounds processed, real-time recorded, and manipulated; the other sound source is a complex no-input feedback chain between the modules, also controlled by Barbagallo through his playing.
As can be seen and heard, music genre boundaries do not exist in Barbagallo’s lexicon and his work is at once kaleidoscopic and mesmerizing. So take a deep aural dive into a new electro-acoustic world that Barbagallo has created on iAmInTiLt,BoB!.
Find out more about Carlo Barbagallo
https://www.facebook.com/carlobarbagallonojarecordings/
https://barbagallo.bandcamp.com/
