A word we often use here at OBLADADA about the type of music we enjoy is adventurous. It’s not necessarily genre, approach or instrument based, just a sense that the artist committed to the process of making music, assembling and connecting ideas, and at some point, chanced upon results that were as much a surprise to them, as to the listener. They set things up but what came out was somehow slightly beyond their control.
In the case of Alessandro “Asso” Stefana’s self-titled new album, something quite unexpected happens perhaps more than the sum of its parts.
The opening triptych Fading Away, Farewell to Dust and Out Of The Blue drift through guitar, piano, lap steel, interwoven with subtle electronics, and country ambience. These opening invitations – a chance to let the music hang in space around you.
Next up, The Wandering Minstrel is full of folky ghosts, a slow waltz along forested trails, whilst The House is John Fahey’s warm shadows, snaking with gently spiralling and corkscrewing drones.
Up to this point, the album feels like it’s slowly assembling an American landscape of mountains, snowy creeks and roaring rivers, a place frozen in the past that constructs like a film set in your mind.
Whilst this is all perfectly agreeable, the next 3 tracks feel like the preceding 5 was a broadly functional, if delicious transitional buffer to whatever and wherever you were before hitting play.
Born And Raised In Covington and I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow take the vocals from the Appalachian singer Roscoe Holcomb. Holcomb’s beautifully haunting voice, originator of the ‘high lonesome sound’ a songbook intertwined with traditional hymns and stories, originally spotlit in the late 50’s and early 60’s as part of the hugely significant surveys by Smithsonian Folkways. Ideas and song forms that can be hazily traced back centuries into the ancient heart of this landscape, preserved on tape forever.
However, the third song in this section, the glorious fireball of Moonshiner, somehow hits like a bolt of lightning. Holcomb’s original acapella song, complete with his soaring nasal drone somehow renders into a gem that transcends any words or narrative. A song plotting the production of liquor in the wilderness, the graft, and more than anything else – the loneliness, folded into a heaving celestial celebration of something far more fundamental.
Of course the original unadorned version is arguably even more devastatingly beautiful but, despite Stefana daring to fill in the spaces, and retell the story, it strikes a sublime balance.
Reworking of gems like this is shark infested waters. Effectively long form sampling is a risky balancing act that can feel like heavy handed theft, or simply diluting the original. However, the delicate way Stefana handles this material feels never less than hugely thoughtful. It’s also clearly another sign-post to circle back and explore the historic significance and raw beauty of Holcomb’s work itself.
Holcomb was originally discovered and recorded, as part of a cultural documentation up to that point, had been passed down aurally through the ages. A mixture of old time vernacular music, designed to become part of the landscape, so this newest reconfiguring is all just part of its permanence. The proof is that whether it was something you first heard carried on some Appalachian breeze 70 year ago, or today via a link to Bandcamp, it’s still beautifully fluid, effective and alive.
Whilst Moonshiner is the undoubted emotive peak on this album, Stefana reveals one more beguiling twist. Continential Spazio takes the ghostly echoes, traces of vocal melody of Moonshiner and then sets it off in smudged droning ripples and surges of pure energy. Strata of time and memory, rising and blurring for almost 14 glorious minutes. This all could somehow be gloomy and eery, but it’s all wrapped up in something far more comforting.
Stefana is a musician that is best known as collaborator, working alongside PJ Harvey (who also executive producer on this record), Mike Patton, Calexico and numerous others.
This is his second solo album but everything here feels like a continuation of his collaborative working process, although here, conducted through a gauze of memories and ghosts.
As an album, Alessandro “Asso” Stefana hits like a reflection or dream. It carefully borrows, retraces and reimagines but somehow, despite the potential to collapse dramatically, it’s an odd, heartfelt and very welcome adventure.
Alessandro “Asso” Stefana is out on Ipecac Recordings, and is available digitally and on CD here
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