Tra contemporanea, avanguardia, elettronica, improvvisazione e ambient, il collettivo avant-garde Bell Orchestre, dopo il sodalizio con l’Erased Tapes Records, ha dato alle stampe “House Music”, album uscito a dieci anni di distanza dall’ultimo lavoro.
Il disco era stato anticipato da “IX: Nature That’s It That’s All”, lo short-film diretto da Kaven Nabatian (membro della band) che ha realizzato il filmato elaborando in 16mm e scansionando filmati dagli archivi britannici di Pathe, e dalla pubblicazione il 7 gennaio di “V: Movement”, incalzante improvvisazione sonora.
“House Music” racconta, senza soluzione di continuità, una storia d’immagini e suoni lunga 43 minuti, in una miscellanea di strumenti classici ed elettronici che varcano i confini di genere; registrato con Hans Bernard quale ingegnere del suono, i Bell Orchestre – Sarah Neufeld (violin, voice), Pietro Amato (french horn, keyboards, electronics), Michael Feuerstack (pedal steel guitar, keyboards, vocals), Kaveh Nabatian (trumpet, gongoma, keyboards, vocals), Richard Reed Parry (bass, vocals) e Stefan Schneider (drums) – si sono assorti nella tenuta rurale di Neufeld in Vermont e hanno suonato ognuno in una stanza diversa per due intere settimane (come racconta Sarah Neufeld). Da questo processo-esperimento è nato ‘House Music’, un flusso di coscienza narrativo di una comunità eusociale.
“If you sliced away the front wall of the house and looked in, you’d see the horn section — with so many different things going on — down on the first floor of what would normally be the living/dining room, and it was full chaos with tables and tables of kalimbas and harmonicas and synthesizers and horns. Then you travel up a floor, and there’s me and Richie in an empty, warm sounding wooden bedroom. Mike was on pedal steel in the bathroom, on the same floor as us. And then up the stairs, through the ceiling and in the attic, was Stefan, alone on drums. It’s a big piece of land, and if you went outside to take a break, you’d look over and hear all of this crazy shit coming out of all the different floors, and it filled this valley, and there were lots of rocks so the sound would bounce around. It was spooky and glorious” – Sarah Neufeld
“Most of my favorite recordings have some element of an explorative and accidental feeling within the music, a feeling which reflects the truth of musical minds which are partially super focused on specific musical ideas and partially wandering, exploring the musical world surrounding those ideas. I think it’s really satisfying as a listener when you can hear a musical mind exploring an idea — not just a musician who has pre-formed an idea and rehearsed it 100 times until it’s totally perfect and ironed out. In this recording, every one of the six of us is simultaneously exploring our own ideas, deeply listening to each others’ wide open minds and also totally immersed in our own strange and beautiful little internal musical worlds.” – Richard Reed Parry
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autore: Marco Sica
