Alessandro Stefana – Alessandro Stefana

Ipecac

Italian songwriter and composer Alessandro “Asso” Stefana seems to be more of a collaborator than a solo artist, so it must be a really personal project that has him stepping out under his own steam.

With PJ Harvey as executive producer and Mike Patton namechecked on the cover, he clearly has some heavy hitting friends, but this is a solo tour de force; a labour of love that finds him playing ukelin, organ, piano, pedal steel, various guitars and basses, with just his friend Mike Kenney helping out on fiddle for two of the nine tracks.

One of the many fascinating parts of this mainly instrumental album is that he has taken recordings of Appalachian singer Roscoe Holcomb from the Smithsonian Folkways recordings and given them a timeless, contemporary setting. Holcomb was originally recording and performing in the fifties and sixties, and the term “high, lonesome sound” was coined to describe his singing style. It fits perfectly into the oeuvre that Alessandro has chosen as the windswept, dusty plains are the setting for most of this collection.

In fact, the opening snippet is just heartbreaking, the simple melancholy akin to being lost in the desert far from home. As the album moves on, so different instruments are utilised: “Farewell To Dust” is a piano ache that struggles for energy while beauty flashes all around, whereas the pedal steel of “Out Of The Blue” throws all the yearning at us, coming out of the wastes covered in dust after years away, the bright sun arcing off an empty flask as the return to civilisation throws up the question of why.

There is a lot of solitude here and there is such a lovely use of the instruments that you revel in the lonely canyon echoes. There is John Fahey-esque finger-picking on the faster-paced “The House”, with organ giving a sense of slow-pan revolution under the ache of the strings; and then the three pieces that use the Holcomb vocal appear, changing the mood again. The voice sounds ancient and you immediately understand how his term was coined. It is time-worn like cracked leather, but the burnished melody against which it is set on “Born And Raised In Covington” is lovely and only highlights the humanity in the voice.

“I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow” is such a familiar song, but here it is stripped of all that; it is desiccated and tired, the backing a slow, spare strip to parched bones with organ and zither-like Marxophone lending an other worldly desperation. This is stripped even further back for the sparse, space-filled “Moonshiner”. The voice moves at its own pace and Alessandro simply adds the least possible to ensure the clarity of the voice.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this sounds like enough of a minimal multi-instrumental treat, but the album finishes with a long drone piece, entirely on organ that strips us of any sense of time and place. In fact, the feeling is more of gradually losing consciousness while sitting around a guttering campfire, breath slipping away as the light begins to fade. There is no obvious way of coming back from this and is the most exquisite ending to what is a most satisfying album.

Clearly appreciated by a bevy of other musicians, I have to say this is where the magic really happens.

-Mr Olivetti-