Fabio Orsi: “Wo ist Behle?”

March 28, 2011, 0 comments

“Wo ist Behle?“, Taranto native Fabio Orsi asks on the cover of his latest work, to be released April 6 (Orsi’s birthday) via Italy’s Boring Machines. Though we don’t know where Behle is, either, let alone who that fella might be, we are sure that the record’s German title is anything but incidental. Rather, Wo ist Behle? is the result of the artist’s relocation to Berlin, from the perennial warmth of his hometown in southern Italy to the harshness of the eastern German winter. Accordingly, in the label’s words, “the sound of the new record is made of pure and cristalline glacial sounds (like snow)”. And indeed, unlike the rough, guitar-based noise on Orsi’s last effort Stand Up Before Me, Oh My Soul! on Australia’s Preservation that we had written about last month, the music on Wo ist Behle? focuses on clear, cool ambient sounds that evoke images of remote cityscapes covered in beautiful yet merciless snow.

Subdividing the record into five tracks ranging from three and a half to almost 15 minutes, each numbered and otherwise simply dubbed Loipe – which is the German expression for tracks primed for cross-country skiing – Orsi takes the listener on an imaginative trip through the wintry city made up of meandering synthesizer patterns and restrained rhythm sections, resulting in an extraordinary piece of avant-garde ambient that subtly borrows from kraut as well as more recent psychedelic experimentalism.

Below, watch the video and listen to Loipe 01, a track that slowly grows, unfolding its magic over the course of nearly 13 minutes, heavily relying on repetition to create a mesmerizing, engrossed vibe.