Manuel Pasquinelli – Heartbeat Drumming: Bellmund Session

(self-released)

Manuel Pasquinelli is probably best known as drummer for Sonar, the David Torn-affiliated group, but also plays with Schrödinger’s Katze and Akku Quintet. For his first solo album, Michael has come up with an intriguing idea; to use his heartbeat as a metronome and to perform a live set using the ever-evolving tempo as a starting point for extemporisation.

Starting with the sound of a heart monitor, the pace is almost immediately odd and irregular, its slow build accompanied by a previously recorded drone backing that acts like a backdrop of a slowly rising sun sparkling and shimmering. Meanwhile, the heartbeat is riffed upon with little fills and touches of tom added as and when Manuel feels the urge.

This is not about a Kraftwerk-like machine music, but is alive at every moment with pace and strength added as the beat speeds up. Who knows what is prompting the speeding up; but perhaps more intriguingly, what allows the slowing down… Whatever it is, this is about the full thirty-seven minute experience, with ragged moments and dramatic fills that combine with the addition of cymbals.

A breakdown to near silence might occur, the percussive textures slowed right down to a two-strike rhythm, its simplicity somehow compelling as you await minute changes. Heavy single strikes clear away the drone mist and almost bring things to a standstill. How he is managing this is a great question; can he force his own heartbeat? Diverse tempos and percussive patterns shake things up and the introduction of metallic elements make things a little wilder.

Manuel sees this experiment as a natural reaction to the advent of AI, suggesting that nothing like this could ever be generated by computer and he has a great point. This is a unique action and if he ever chose to try it at another time, that second action would be different again; which, when allied to his willingness to embellish the varying beat and increase the pressure with additional textures, is rather satisfying. The ever-evolving drone counterpoint gives some context, but as if seen from a vast distance while the beat is immediate and visceral.

The unreliability of the heart as a metronome is amplified over time, with the changes in pattern increasing and then easing tension, patterns developing from near silence into metallic clashes before finally dissipating and returning to the lone monitor beat. Manuel Pasquinelli’s Heartbeat Drumming: Bellmund Session is a fascinating and well-recorded idea that is surprisingly compelling; a must for any listener interested in the humanity of rhythm and how it might be affected in a live environment.

-Mr Olivetti-