The Glamour Tapes Aparticle

• 1 Seedsman 03:34
• 2 Upper Limbs 02:18
• 3 Labile 05:09
• 4 Not Even Equal 04:06
• 5 Our Warning System 06:35
• 6 Daily Beauty 02:10
• 7 Third Action 04:34
• Total Runtime 28:26

Info for The Glamour Tapes

Ritmo & Blu Records is pleased to present “The Glamor Tapes,” a new work by Aparticle. Produced by Stefano Castagna, “The Glamor Tapes” is an entirely analog reinterpretation of “The Glamor Action,” the quartet’s latest record, recorded and mixed at Studio Ritmo & Blu.

Aparticle is made up by Michele Bonifati, Giulio Stermieri, Cristiano Arcelli and Ermanno Baron, an eclectic quartet that offers a personal synthesis of Jazz, Rock and improvisation. Born in 2017, they debuted with Bulbs in 2018, followed by The Glamor Action in 2020: in concert the songs of the disc are interpreted as a launch for new compositions, testifying to a continuous collective research that is reflected in an increasingly evident identity of group. The re-reading of the 2020 album should therefore not be understood as a moment of fatigue or a break, but as a central stage in the path of dialogue between composition and impromptuness. Both in the writing and in the organization of the interactions, the present tense takes on considerable importance: this characterizes Aparticle as a peculiar and intriguing improvising band.

Revisiting your own record is an important operation, especially if – as happened for “The Glamor Tapes,” reinterpreted according to the “vintage” perspective dear to Ritmo & Blu – governed by a unique production and listening philosophy. As Aparticle points out about the invitation: “Stefano Castagna proposed us to make a new version of the album working completely in analog: we recorded on a tape multitrack and mixed on an analog desk. No computer was used in any production phase and the audio was not processed through any digital device. This was a time for us to rethink how technology can affect music production. In this perspective we have reworked our material, adapting it to this new recording process.”

The reworking of the album stimulated reflection and artistic exploration in the quartet, starting with the role of the production process up to questioning the support as such in an era of liquid music. The questions and ideas that arose in this phase were extended to colleagues, critics, record companies and friends, so much so as to generate a broad and shared reflection process that has become part of the booklet. Above all we quote the opinion of a historical and authoritative signature such as Aldo Gianolio: “A very modern and personal music, in which they have perfectly metabolized sounds and ideas that run in the air of contemporaneity, making them their own and adapting them to their styles, with beautiful architectures played on the juxtapositions of aerial and floating parts and others that are more earthy and solid.“

Cristiano Arcelli, alto saxophone
Michele Bonifati, guitar
Giulio Stermieri, Fender Rhodes, organ, Juno60
Ermanno Baron, drums

Aparticle
is an ensemble of four talented jazz musicians who crossed paths in 2017 after a long series of national and international live performances, experienced singularly or as part of a different collective all around the world. Their talents blended in two albums, “Bulbs”(2018) and “The Glamour Action” (2020), where their refined experimental Euro Jazz research and their love for gut-feeling Afro drums shine alike.

Aparticle are Michele Bonifati, Giulio Stermieri, Cristiano Arcelli and Ermanno Baron, an eclectic quartet with a very peculiar blend of jazz, rock and improvised music.

They formed in 2017, their debut album, Bulbs, came out in 2018, followed by The Glamour Action in 2020. Their identity is always in progress: as they play their tracks live, these gradually become springboards for the invention of newer songs.

The Glamour Tapes is the completely analogic re-reading of The Glamour Action in an effort to capture in studio the dialogue between composing and improvising. It’s a revision under the stars of the “here and now” as in heroic times, at the point of intersection with the work of producer Stefano Castagna who has been making a philosophy of producing and listening “analogue” for years now. “We met and Stefano suggested we could revisit our second album working in a completely analogue atmosphere.

We were curious, so we went multi-track in Stefano’s studio and then mixed in analogue with his Solid State Logic console. No computers were used at any productive stage and the audio hasn’t been processed by whatsoever digital device. It was an important moment of recognition of how deeply sound technology can affect pure sound itself. In this perspective our material went through a thorough re-elaboration, artistically even, in the light of Stefano’s different mode of sound-recording”.

In the era of “liquid music”, the difficulties and challenges of this new stance reverberated through the community of friends, journalists, professional engineers and fellow musicians, as you can read in the booklet.

Booklet for The Glamour Tapes