Nicola Ratti
Nicola Ratti is a multifaceted musician and sound designer who has been active for years in various experimental fields. His sound production creates systems that take shape from repetition and dilation, with particular attention to the construction of environments that gravitate in relation to the space and architecture we inhabit and balancing the emotional and perceptive orientations to which we are accustomed.
Nicola Ratti is a multifaceted musician and sound designer who has been active for years in various experimental fields. His sound production creates systems that take shape from repetition and dilation, with particular attention to the construction of environments that gravitate in relation to the space and architecture we inhabit and balancing the emotional and perceptive orientations to which we are accustomed.
Member of: Bellows
Padre, fammi partire! (a tribute to Franco Battiato)
“Padre, fammi partire!” (Father, make me leave!). Franco Battiato, orphan of a father, sings this verse in "Da Orienta a Occidente". He declaims it solemnly and decisively. More than a request for a blessing, it is a declaration of intent. The force with which this prayer is recited admits of no weakness, no compromise and no obstacle. To leave is necessary. The volcano is there, showing the way. The power of this phrase reflects the impatience of a hawk that, tied to the arm of its falconer, wa…
Automatic Popular Music
Inside Automatic Popular Music there are two people sitting in a room, their backs to each other. One plays a piano with no particular attention to detail and tuning of the instrument, and another, sitting behind him, claps his hands on his own legs. They do not see each other, they never look at each other, they can only listen to each other, look around. The room is large enough, it is daytime, there are four windows through which enough light enters to illuminate the objects and furniture wit…
Shinkai
** Hand stickered & stamped LP with lyric insert ** Five years after the release of ‘Pressure Loss’ the modern master of electronic minimalism Nicola Ratti returns to Where To Now? in collaboration with Japanese MC ‘MA’, for a suite of submerged, outsider Trip-Hop. ‘Shinkai’ meets at the crossroads of the gloomy sonic snapshot world of Tricky, the South London DIY avant pop bloom of Curl/Mica Levi, the outer fringes of Hip-Hop heralded by the Anticon crew, and the deep textured minimalism of Mac…
Framework 3
Danish musician/composer Mads Emil Nielsen continues his Framework series; a collection of open, hand-drawn graphic scores and recordings. Framework 3 is the latest instalment in Nielsen’s sequence of graphic scores and recordings. The series includes the Danish composer’s own subjective translations of visual materials and sound pieces accompanied by visual notations.
On this release he collaborates with Katja Gretzinger and Nicola Ratti. Published as a limited edition art print folder, Frame…
Undercurrent
Black Truffle announce Undercurrent, the new LP from the long-running Milanese duo of Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti. Following on from high-profile releases on Boomkat Editions and Shelter Press in the last few years, the eight untitled pieces making up Undercurrent continue the pair's hypnotic and disorientating practice of improvisation based on tape loops. Often sitting halfway between electro-acoustic technique and beat-based production, the music of Bellows obliquely recalls aspects of h…
Continental
**300 copies** Continental is the new full-length solo record by Milan-based multi-instrumentalist Nicola Ratti, following recent releases on Where to Now? and Room40. Conceived of by Ratti as a "series of big rooms or places to get lost in, full of small details and characterized each by a single flavor or perfume", it is a surprising and vibrant collection of music. Working with a palette of spare, expertly deployed percussive synthesis techniques, Ratti's work here is both labyrinthine and co…
Decouple Series
The first in a series of split vinyls concerning dependencies, miscommunication and increasing complexity in our media- saturated digital era. Georgia and Bellows inaugurate the decouple ][ series with works between futuristic eclecticism and avant-garde pan-aesthetics, where musical themes flow tangentially. Similar, but without effectively engaging one another. A metaphor for a world of surfaces.Recorded in Georgia’s Chinatown NYC studio, ‘Tiwala sa buani’ abruptly throw us into freaky percuss…
Odd Doubt / Johnny Leech
Edition of 150 copies. Granny13 opens with Nicola Ratti's 'Odd Doubt'. With the use of a modular system and tape loops, a broken rhythm is obtained by parallelism between single sound signals as LFO one or processed tapes. On the second side, Giovanni Lami's 'Johnny Leech' is made with a small bunch of equipment, just a chaotic hand-made synth (cacophonator) and a memoryman, working mainly on static electricity and leakage current in the synth used without any kind of power supply.
The Collection
From Nicola Ratti... "These recordings were made during a relatively long period of time, not continuously, over several months in my studio. Nothing was been planned in advance, not any idea of album or approach. Nevertheless I easily recognize myself in this material, moreover I recognize my working space itself. It's like taking a picture, or make a painting, of your personal room where all your stuff is well placed and, among them, their identities as sound sources and acoustic possib…
Strand
rossing small sound science from Milan’s Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti, aka Bellows, one of our favourite production units now marking up another mesmerising addition to their frayed, knotty microcosmos of sounds following on from LP's for our own Boomkat Editions as well as the Latency, Senufo and Planam labels.
The thing that marks Bellows apart from many of their academic peers is their interest in bass dynamics. Theirs is a careful study of rhythmic and low-end propulsion at an almos…
Pressure Loss
**restocked** Nicola Ratti holds a rich history in the world of experimental and minimalist composition, having released music under his own name on labels such as Kning Disk, Anticipate, Preservation, Holidays, and Senufo Editions and in recent times concentrating his energy into his collaborative project ‘Bellows’, work which has seen the light thanks to Entr’acte Records and most recently Boomkat Editions. His latest solo work ‘Pressure Loss’ finds Ratti at a potential turning point in his mu…
Wounded Boys
Bellows' Nicola Ratti investigates micro-rhythmic, electro-acoustic dub on solo terms with 'Wounded Boys' arriving in Where To Now?'s endless stream of ace new issues. Proceeding his pair of 12"s for Italy's Holidays Records in 2014, Ratti coalesces a more intimate, viscous sound on this outing, maybe best compared with the earliest Pole releases or Jan Jelinek abstractions. 'Elbow' nudges fidgety sparks and bass rubs in vast empty space; 'Wrist' flicks droplets and glassy tronics with wet sprin…
Rustl
Italian electro-acoustic maestros Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti, aka Bellows, serve an engrossing, labyrinthine LP of freeform concrète dub on our occasional Boomkat Editions label. 'Rustl' is Bellows' 4th album following a critically acclaimed trio of LP's released since 2007 for Entr'acte, Planam and Kning Disc, and also follows our last release by another Milanese artist, Lorenzo Senni, which was coincidentally also mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. In a slight change from their usual wo…
Resophonic
Welcome to the third installment in the 13 issues series. This time is the turn of Nicola Ratti from Milan, Italy, and Mark Templeton from Edmonton, Canada, whose musical work was mixed and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and is accompanied by pictures taken by Leanne Olson, also from Edmonton. Nicola Ratti began his musical career as guitar player. Lately his approach is more focused on beat-analog experimentation and sound installation. He is currently working with Giuseppe Ielasi, with whom he fo…
Ossario Volume I and II
** Edition of 300 copies on opaque white vinyl in printed clear PVC sleeves ** This is a true sensation: a masterful album released as a double 12" (available separately) housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve, on white vinyl; a steely, scratchy looping expansion form the backbone, tension, haunting layers of undertones combined with dark, spectral murmurings...Outstanding! "Through the use of sound generated from modular synthesizer, tapes and samples Nicola Ratti Ossario is a collection of ten …
Reelin
Limited edition of 250 copies in a deluxe LP with embossed lettering and printed inner. Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti reconvene their wonderfully enigmatic Bellows project with a ghostly album for Entr'acte. 'Reelin'' is the third document of their hardware-honed endeavours, and much like their eponymous debut on Kning Disk and celebrated side for Planam, we're left with little background info other than their equipment list. Navigating between a CDJ/Sony Walkman/Revox A77/Memory Man, they cr…
Streengs
‘Streengs’ is Nicola Ratti’s fifth solo cd, and it showcases a completely new direction in his work. Using a minimal setup composed of a small analog synthesizer and a delay/looping device, amplified with two audio transducers placed on the strings of a grand piano, Ratti managed to create a very complex and dense soundworld. Every piece was recorded in realtime, during a residency at Hotel Pupik, Schrattenberg, in July 2011, allowing the sounds from the surroundings to interfere wi…
Reelin'
*Limited edition of 350 copies in a vacuum packed metallic foil packaged with embossed lettering* Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti reconvene their wonderfully enigmatic Bellows project with a ghostly album for Entr'acte. 'Reelin'' is the third document of their hardware-honed endeavours, and much like their eponymous debut on Kning Disk and celebrated side for Planam, we're left with little background info other than their equipment list. Navigating between a CDJ/Sony Walkman/Revox A77/Me…
Cathode Deafness
Two cathode ray tube televisions , a tape loop and an echo-looper pedal. The intent is to explore through the two televisions the emptied ether due to the shifting of the TV channels from the aerial signal to the digital . The CRT television becomes a deaf machine, an end in itself, a sort of "bachelor machine". The recordings are the result of a series of live improvisations