GUESTMIX#10: Von Tesla [Enklav, Boring Machines]

Artwork by: c : pala [FB / SC / TAKE]

After the two-weeks break for website maintenance and improvement we’re finally back in business: the amazing gift we share with you today is GUESTMIX#10 by Von Tesla, one of the most talented electronic music producers in Italy over the last years, releasing stuff – among the others – on the Italian Enklav and Boring Machines outcomes. The outstanding mixed selection comes with an also outstanding artwork by the graphic artist & producer c : pala who already scored Carlo Maria Amadio’s GUESTMIX#8 one. The next chance to catch up with Von Tesla live will be this very Saturday [17/12/16] in Turin, Italy, at Magazzino sul Po, inside the last #ONGAPALOOZA Festival edition, which is the final 2016 occasion to gather and celebrate once again Boring Machines’ tenth year of non-stop activity. The complete line-up is available here.

The mix recorded for us summarizes in a perfect way the overall Von Tesla’s research and musical interests, as you can see reading the tracklist few lines below. The chosen tracks outlines a wide set of influences going from advantgarde / experimental composers such as David Tudor and Boyd Rice to the more recent drone and noise explorers (The Haxan Cloak, Jesse Osborne-Lanthier), from glitch / ambient producers (2562, Raster-Norton’s Grischa Lichtenberger) to the most futuristic sides of electronic music as featured on Lee Gamble’s label UIQ (Renick Bell, ZULI), Type (Kane Ikin), Ekster (Hiele, Ssaliva) and the Manhattan-based PTP – Purple Tape Pedigree (Eaves).

Enjoy it pushing the play button right below; the tracklist is at the end of the article!


Von Tesla: FB / TUMBLR / SC

Von Tesla is a project based on the research and deconstruction of synthetic sequences, sustained by textures and asynchronous dark beats, acid sounds, hypnotic loops and profound echoes of distorted landscapes [www.vontesla.com]

Von Tesla is an Italian artist from Treviso, Italy, who started releasing music as Be Invisible Now! in 2002. The 2007 Neutrino album was the second overall work on Boring Machines, and hosted his kosmische experiments that proceeded until 2011  via various splits and collaborations such as BIN / Expo ’70 and Be Maledetto Now together with With Love and Squadra Omega’s Nihil is Me. Then, under the new Von Tesla alias, he self-released the limited-edition, 64-minutes-long Mondo Parallel record presented through a non-stop live streaming djset that lasted one entire night. Mondo Parallel was followed by ‘Black Mirror’ on Claudio Rocchetti’s Tulip Records, ‘Raised By Clear Acid’ on Onga’s Boring Machines, ‘Providing Needles’ & ‘Farewell is a Building’ on the Venice-based hi-tech label Enklav. Detailed infos are available on the artist’s website.

2016 was a particularly fecund year for Von Tesla and we feel it’s worth spending few words about it (click on the images to get redirected):

Quatremont College - Teachers
Paolo Iocca - Suture (Von Tesla Remix)
Von Tesla - Secure Digital
Von Tesla - 'IV C Platform'
Quatremont College - Teachers
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  • Quatremont College – Teachers [Enklav, 18/04/16] – Quatremont College is Chevel + Evn + Mudwise + Von Tesla, at the second release together: Teachers EP is a selection of music recorded between 2015 and 2016, presented with graphics by Christian Olofsson and mastering by Aucan’s Jo Ferliga at Tapewave Mastering, Brescia, Italy. In these pieces of dubbed and evocative electronics join all the four artistic forces involved carving a perfect example of tomorrow-electronics, brought to you by the fantastic Enklav outcome;
  • aa.vv. – PBWVBS [Random Numbers, 10/06/16] – Random Numbers released its first physical record back in June 2016, publishing a collection of 6 tracks from the RN crew plus three selected remixes, in tape format. Here you can listen to VT’s remix of ‘Suture’ by Paolo Iocca, formerly known as Spire. Broke One (White Forest / BMKLTSCH / La Valigetta) and Stromboli (Maple Death Records) completes the selection with two other reworks: the tape is a multifaceted collection of sounds, faithful to the label program of ‘connecting the dots between various styles‘;
  • VT’s come back to Enklav few months ago marked the release of one of the 2016 finest records, called ‘Secure Digital’ and sold in a SD Standard Capacity card filled up with the seven album tracks in loseless .wav 44.100 KHz 24 bit format (as you can see here); once again, the guys over at Enklav firmly reiterates the strict relationship of their music with the hi-tech digital world: “this is futurist club music“;
  • ENKLAV.25, out late November 2016, was developed around a Matteo Pasin project called ‘The War Is Over – State Of The Union Address’ which consists of a video-essay made out of YouTube-found footage, inquiring the relation between power and social body passing through the mediations exercised by ideology and technology. Each one of those was scored by a different Enklav producer (Chevel, Wavefold, Von Tesla, Hatcp, Evn, Mudwise) and can be viewed at Enklav’s YouTube. VT’s ‘IV C Platform’ track provides an overwhelming listening experience and oddly matches with the rushing crowd of people depicted in the videoclip;

 

  • In October 2016, after the amazing Futeisha’s ‘Last Nihilist’ album, the Berlin-based young tape-label Bindu Sound put out its eigth release this year and settled in among the most interesting imprints in 2016; ’20-22 Gate Audio’ sets the quality bar at pretty damn high levels for Von Tesla, and all of it comes with a super-gaudy package you can take a look at here. If we were to pick a single tune out of the lotto we’d instead go for the double-killer ending tracks ‘Second Etch’ and ‘Sistim 20’, the former featuring heavy-manipulated rhythmic patterns, glitchy sounds and sudden synth breaks, and the latter offering an unespected glimpse of VT’s peculiar tear-jerking melodies [Soundcloud link]

Finally, we’d also like to thank Von Tesla and Enklav for letting us feature the ‘City Lights’ track as appeared in ‘Farewell is a Building’ [Enklav 016] in our 120-seconds-long video project presentation you can see here below. All rights are reserved to WAS Wordandsound Medien GmbH on behalf of Enklav; we do not own anything. As mentioned before, the appointment to see the artist in action is this Saturday at Magazzino sul Po in Turin. See you there!


TRACKLIST


  1. l a n u k – harr44
  2. The Haxan Cloak – Hounfour (Temple)
  3. Ssaliva – Overland
  4. 2562 – Desert Lament
  5. Jesse Osborne-Lanthier – Deliquescent: Cadence / Decadence
  6. Boyd Rice & Frank Tovey – Extraction 9
  7. Metasplice – Novaglide
  8. Grischa Lichtenberger – 13 0311_01 Re 0510_24
  9. Renick Bell – Surface Waters Flow Together
  10. Kane Ikin – Crosstalk
  11. Ssaliva – Lingam
  12. Hiele – Gestures
  13. ZULI – Robotic Handshakes in 4d
  14. David Tudor – Pulsers
  15. Eaves – Vascular

 


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PAYNOMINDTOUS is a non-profit organization registered in December 2018, operating since late 2015 as a webzine and media website. In early 2017, we started our own event series in Turin, IT focused on arts, experimental, and dancefloor-oriented music. We reject every clumsy invocation to “the Future” meant as the signifier for capitalistic “progress” and “innovation”, fully embracing the Present instead; we renounce any reckless and ultimately arbitrary division between “high” and “low”, respectable and not respectable, “mind” and “body”; we support and invite musicians, artists, and performers having diverse backgrounds and expressing themselves via variegated artistic practices.