FABIO ORSI
Wo Ist Behle?
BM029
Boring Machines 2011
05 Tracks. 45mins26secs

Hailing from the coastal city of Taranto in southern Italy, Fabio Orsi has, in the space of barely six years, collated a considerable body of work, scattered on various labels (A Silent Place, Ruralfaune, Low Point, Priviledged To Fail…). Beside a number of solo releases, he has collaborated with the likes of My Cat Is An Alien, Mamuthones, Seaworthy or Valerio Cosi to name but a few. Finding inspiration in the pre-war recordings of Alan Lomax, Orsi’s work, often based on field recordings which he processes into evocative soundscapes, attempts to document his surroundings.

Having recently moved to Berlin, where he found himself in the midst of the German capital’s harsh and cold winter, this is very much what he does here. Working with sparse electronics, which he loops into vast hypnotic progressive pieces, Orsi appears to reflect the icy weather with equally wintry sound formations. If he had simply stuck to loops, Wo Ist Behle? would have been a very desolate affair. Instead, he develops here slow evolutive soundscapes, which, although often appearing irremediably static, continuously develop and change, through imperceptible nudges of modular synthesis. Like anonymous shadow-like bodies moving through a thick freezing fog, these alterations are too slight to register and be acknowledged for definite, yet they undeniably exist and actually prove essential to the balance of the record.

Perhaps the most haunting piece on here, Loipe 1 is a masterful slice of hypnotic electronic music. Opening with a heavy drone, Orsi slowly brings a pulsating loop nearer the surface over the next few minutes, then, from the halfway mark, applies a second, much sharper loop, over it as the backdrop becomes more expansive. As the track progresses, it becomes criss-crossed with acerbic sonic streaks until the whole piece eventually dies down twelve and a half minutes in. Clocking at almost fifteen minutes, Loipe 3 is of an even more cosmic disposition, but while basing himself once again on a hazy drone, Orsi chooses here to focus almost entirely on its evolutive characteristic. As more components are introduced, from tonal nuances and astral winds to rhythmic sequences, there are hints of dreamy electronic textures pioneered by Rubycon-era Tangerine Dream.

Although much shorter, Loipe 2 and 4 are equally as atmospheric and spellbinding, their sprawling soundscapes almost entirely obliterating their more restrictive scope. Of the two, the latter is the more sombre, its vaporous backdrop, placed in sharp contrast to the much more linear pulses which are left floating above it, appearing like an ominous storm cloud brewing in the distance.

After the calm progressive aspect of the first four tracks, Loipe 5 comes as something of a shock. Here the electronic textures are simply used to wrap incisive guitars in effects, creating something more akin to shoegaze than to kosmische, creating a clash with the rest of the album, as if Orsi was doing this to bring his audience out of the torpor he instilled on earlier pieces.

Wo Ist Behle? is an uncompromising record which sees Fabio Orsi moving away from using field recordings and experimenting with documenting his environment with artificial sounds instead. The result is, quite simply, nothing short of breathe-taking.

4.9/5

Fabio Orsi | Fabio Orsi (MySpace) | Boring Machines