Review of Om On by Pierluigi Billone, Kairos, 2018
https://www.kairos-music.com/cds/0015057kai
http://www.pierluigibillone.com/it/home/
“I concentrate energies, literally: I create centers of attraction for sound energies and their life of possible relationships. In sound’s initial life I meet and recognize its lines of force, recognizable tendencies, the possible bonds that become the first strengths’ points of a construction: and like… a law to be known and respected. The moment I know it I can use it for different purposes: the constant principle of transformation links each state to another, but, thanks to chains of transformations or instantaneous movements of transformation, what is bound can be different and very distant. The states and situations that happen remain recognizable as belonging to the initial nature of the sound but sometimes they are completely artificial, abstract and visionary apparitions.”
http://www.pierluigibillone.com/it/testi/il_suono_e_la_mia_materia_2010.html
The Italian composer Pierluigi Billore returns to the electric guitar after the excellent cd “Sgorgo Y.N. OO “, released in 2016 that saw the interpretation of the talented Yaron Deutsch. This return is with a new album “Om On” always released on Kairos and which sees in action the guitar duo composed by Yaron Deutsch and Tom Pauwels. This new “Om On” brings to the extreme the musical language already presented with “Sgorgo Y.N. OO “, a language that sees the electric guitar protagonist of a new controlled expansion, of a new possible metamorphosis linked to plastic and visual gestural forms.
I have listened several times to this record, which saturates the recording time allowed to the cd’s possibilities and, at the same time, all the expressive possibilities of the electric guitar, focusing in particular on the glissandi and the noises generated by the electric primers. I heard it both high and low volume and the feeling was always the same: the creation of a dense and vibrant ambient sound, the buliding of a sound environment characterized a delicate and complex plot. Listened to low volume it generates an almost glitchy substrate of sounds and silences interrupted suddenly by the guitars’ glissati, an almost arctic panorama of peaks and plateaus. At high volume it generates a multicolored and multi-layered swarm, where all the individual gestures, all the small movements can be easily felt on skin, where everything becomes an almost exaggerated sensitivity. This thing is even more highlighted if seen live. If you get a visual dimension. If you watch the video of the live performance performed by Tom Pauwels & Yaron Deutsch, in Alfortville, ‘La Muse en Circuit’, February 16th, 2018:
you will notice the concentrated attention and the measured gestures of the two interpreters. Billone’s music is the result of a minimal gesture, a minimal field of action around the electric instrument, a combination of sounds generated by two electric guitars totally divorced from their original pop-rock context, a complex and articulated plot between sound and absence of silence. “Om On” is a record to think about.
NeuGuitars 