[releases] afe118lcd
fhievel: pipe smoking on a balloon

Track List:

1.  Part 1  8:05

2.  Part 2  11:03

3.  Part 3  4:12

4.  Part 4  8:06

5.  Part 5  6:18

Description:

Luca Bergero was born in Italy in 1980. If his electronic engineering studies helped his meeting with algorhytmic composition, at the same time they gave way to his crisis for technologic music pushing him to the concrete sound.

His constant doubt, the desire to bring back art to the state of an unconditioned phenomenon - finally back in man's hands - and the necessity for development, contribute to a severe creation balanced between opposite sound sources.

In 2003 his lowercase work "Vetri di carta" was produced by S’agita Recordings. In February 2005 the Portuguese label Creative Sources Recordings released "Pocket Progressive", a trio improvisation recorded along with Luca Sigurtà and Claudio Rocchetti.

"Le baptême de la solitude" was released in late 2005 by Petite Sono], soon followed by the MiniCD-R 3" "Preghiera per una stella" (Prayer For a Star) on Afe in April 2006.

"Pipe Smoking On a Balloon", was released in an edition of 50 copies by Polish label Um/Ko in 2007, while his collaboration with Hue (of Sparkle in Grey fame) and Maurizio Bianchi entitled "Erimos" was published by Digitalis in the USA as part of the "Between the Elements" quadrilogy.

Another untitled collaboration with Luca Sigurtà and Claudio Rocchetti found its place in the Setola di Maiale catalogue in 2007."The Wheel", a masterpiece of field-recordings and audio archaeology by Fhievel and Luca Sigurtà was released on Creative Sources in early 2008.

Due to its original poor distribution, we decided to re-release "Pipe Smoking On a Balloon". Here's a description of the album written by director Manuele Cecconello:

This recent work by Luca Bergero seems to be innervated by a propositive and recapitulative intent. A grainy weaving, ancestral and earthy, subtlety converses with lunar swirls, aerial explorations, insisted neatness tied to an unyielding rationality that is never content with probing the penetralia of planet Mind.

Fhievel spreads a sonic speech of rare stylistic dryness and expressive tenacity since a few years. His productions can be identified as chapters of a manual about the auditive experience of an interior dimension; reality becomes a large collision field between psychic masses of various nature: oniric hesitations, romantic gazings, adventurous exploration of the unconscious and, to supervise this perpetual vibration, an investigative push on emotions.

All these ingredients of high painful potential are treated under the flat light of the operating-table, with cuts of surgical precision and ever-going transfusions of enlivening physiological substances. The digital lancet operates deep on the intimate biography of the man Bergero, arranging minutely to the hearing a paradoxical geography of tactile and bodily sensations finely filtered by a special sensibility to autoinspection and living taxonomy.

"Pipe Smoking On a Balloon" comes in a recapitulative sense to unfold a vast sonic surface, an omnicomprensive and immeasurable pangea of bare, stony, desert nature. The ideal dimension to dip one's fingers in a primordial mould and obtain samples, fragments and powders to be analyzed, looking for signs of life. Not a depth action anymore, but an extensive exploration, not the dissection of the single crystal but the discovery of the entire periodic table of the elements. Therefore it acts in a propositive way giving room to the rough materiality of existence: if until now Fhievel has devoted himself to sounds as an arbitrary artificiality and as an object of chemical synthesis, in here his gesture opens to the consideration of surprising reactions, sonorities are being allowed to gemmate on an amorphous and iridescent mud.

The crop of sharp, luminous and piercing radiations the author has accustomed us to now serve as a catalyst for cognitive processes in large leaps forward to a more evolute idea of the unconscious spatial dimension. The gravelly plateau of Self give hospitality to the epiphany of language and, maybe, of beauty. Fhievel the geographer expand the boundaries of the most mysterious and bristling territory; the unutterable journey to the source of thoughts becomes sonic word and immanent dialectics. The earth-Mind, enriched with more secrets, renews.


Reviews:

"Last Fhievel's effort to date, "Pipe Smoking On a Ballon" carries on Luca Bergero's excursion in acousmatic and sound art territories. This effort demonstrates Luca Bergero's impressive capacity to combine natural ambient sources with digital processes and circular droning textures... An other important document that stresses Luca Bergero's alchemic sense of writting."
Prog Archives [more]

"Luca Bergero works under the project name of Fhievel, and his curiously entitled "Pipe Smoking On a Balloon" almost transcends categorisation. With a background in microsonics, and a penchant for capitalising on his more leftfield leanings, Bergero's instrumentation bears the patina of decay, each sequence being infused with granular layerings, and he deploys various bleeps and oblique tonalities. "Pipe Smoking On a Balloon" shifts and shimmers quietly, crackling and popping like waves over shingle, a hugely engaging and captivating release, and well worth checking out if, like me you are still a worshipper of the glitch."
White_Line [more]

"Di Luca Bergero, alias Fhievel, viene ristampato un lavoro uscito in sole 50 copie nel 2007. Tra i tanti che si cimentano con il suono digitale prossimo all'ineffabile, Fhievel è tra i pochi che riesce a comporre liricamente, ridando al silenzio, ai microsuoni e alle textures elettroniche il valore di cose preziose ed introvabili in una continua ricerca dell'essenziale."
Blow Up [more]

"...Across almost thirty eight minute duration Fhievel's "Pipe Smoking On a Balloon" album maintains a sense of calm and never strays into harshness or anything that doesn't make you feel like you're floating along with the clouds (perhaps in a balloon with a pipe in hand?). That's not to say it grows boring either though. Although I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite track, I'd have to say that the first part is my favorite, with its gentle shifting electronics and subtle use of noise perfectly encapsulating what the rest of the album is about. "Pipe Smoking On a Balloon" managed to keep my attention throughout its duration and made a very fine companion on a rare good-weathered Wyoming winter day."
Connexion Bizarre [more]

"Ristampa del lavoro uscito nel 2007 in cinquanta copie, "Pipe Smoking On a Balloon" ripristina la suggestione di un suono unico, pulito, senza sovrapposizioni, solo e solitario. Afe Records ce lo ripropone allungando ulteriormente la lista di nomi davvero interessanti del panorama sperimentale, che produce. Fhievel imbastisce composizioni nude e lievi, della stessa consistenza di un granello di polvere nella sua danza eterna. La ricerca e lo studio sul suono risultano la chiave di volta del progetto, straniante quanto stimolante. I suoni digitali, minimi ma stabili sulle gambe si presentano come partiture sinfoniche ridotte all'osso, evocano classicità melodica filtrata dalla tecnologia, in una costante ricerca della sottrazione e della purezza sonora. Una goccia di pioggia in grado di far crollare un palazzo."
RockIt [more]

"Pipe Smoking On a Balloon" by Fhievel is another fine release from the Afe label, which has many great releases in its growing arsenal... The five parts of the album offer us a musical experience that slowly ranges from almost dead silent moments in which Fhievel is developing tiny sounds that emerge for short moments and then fade, to rising static sounds with a much more massive presence. The feeling throughout this journey tends to be very dreamy as a result of this combination. At one moment the album can make us imagine we are being taken to a quiet field at night, listening to the remote sounds of crickets and wind. And on the next moment we are hit with smoky walls of electronic sounds that engulf us completely like a sudden fog... "Pipe Smoking On a Balloon" demands the listener's full attention and, in return, offers a great, almost spiritual trip. In my opinion, this is a great bargain that should not be missed."
Musique Machine [more]