3/4HadBeenEliminated - A year of the aural gauge operation

Italian Magi, mapping new zones in rock.

				3/4HadBeenEliminated was founded in Bologna, Italy, in 2002. Starting as a trio (guitarist/double bassist Stefano Pilia, turntablist/sound assembler Claudio Rocchetti, sound architect Valerio Tricoli), the drummer Tony Arrabito was added to the line up in 2004. Their first self titled record (bowindo, 2003) was released after playing a series of live concerts in which the group attention was strongly focused on the performative/theatrical/ecological aspects of the event. Comprised of a large number of electronic and acoustic instruments, the album mirrors the disparate musical influences and aesthetics of the group: live electronics, electroacoustic composition, field recordings, drones... In the following two years, after exploring and experimenting with self invented recording techniques, 3/4’s modus operandi focused on live interaction between electronic and acoustic instruments within a context in which the studio itself (tape machines, mixers, effects...) and the actual space in which the interaction took place (weird microphoning, feedbacks...) were considered and manipulated as instruments themselves (not by chance 3/4’s are fans of musicians such as This Heat, P16.D4, Todd Rundgren...). In this process, improvisation and group playing were the main issues, whereas 3/4’s first release was more based upon electroacoustic découpage. "“A Year of the Aural Gauge Operation is the second album by Italian quartet 3/4HadBeenEliminated. Like recent music from their peers Renato Rinaldi and Giuseppe Ielasi, 3/4HadBeenEliminated transpose buzzing pools of insect chatter with rich, swelling drones and movements that gesture toward song. It’s another kind of ‘post rock’ that’s far removed from the genre’s typical signification. Where previously the term may have evoked slack-wristed, head-nodding fusions of jazz, electronics and rock, groups like 3/4HadBeenEliminated engage in nothing less than the molecularization of rock music, reducing it to a dense, evocative slurry of phantom tones and fleeting, melancholy phrases guaranteed to induce déjà vu. The quartet often disrupts their own compositions, with several pieces dipping abruptly into silence only to gradually recharge on a different plane. The most engaging moments on the album occur when Claudio Rocchetti’s turntables and electronics inject ghostly voices, gritty noise and other incidentals into slowly developing themes. Building edifices of sound that threaten to topple even as they reach a graceful peak, 3/4HadBeenEliminated remind me of This Heat in their concrete approach to rock and improvisation, as they repeatedly let frayed ends disturb the pieces collected on this quietly stunning disc.” - Jon Dale Desvelao