FHIEVEL

The quality of what you smoke.

An electronic 5 track music/noise essay which dwells into the electronic/acoustic/drone/minimalist/experimental realms.

As a listening experience things get quiet tedious without compassion. Luca Bergero aka Fhievel seems to agree, as many contemporary musicians expect, with the idea of the forced role of the listener as a passive entity who has to endure this quiet uninteresting and over indulgent experiments.

I in fact had no expectations whatsoever. Not knowing Fhievel, nor having any kind of information , nor caring to do so now, about this "PIPE SMOKING ON A BALLON", 2008, but as I listened, I felt totally and increasingly disappointed as an electronic music consumer who paid for this horse (fill in the blank)!!

*1 PA star.

In this collaborative project, Fhievel momentarily abandon the exploration of sonic-static drones to focuse on sound objects and on the cinematic aspects of concrete noises. The result is not as vibrant and as surrounding as the other efforts released under the name Fhievel but it delivers enough complex collages and visual metaphors to keep the listener's attention. Pocket Progressive is a radical experimental album that has the potential to invoke psychological states and to challenge the capacity of listening. This is cinema for the ears that deserves several listenings and a complete disponibility of the audience. In some way you have to be ritually prepared to experience, to understand deeply and to absord the essence of these two micro-tonal pieces that concilate acoustic and visual subjectivations.

Last Fhievel's effort to date, Pipe smoking on a ballon carries on Luca Bergero's exctusion in acousmatic and sound art territories. This effort demonstrates Luca Bergero's impressive capacity to combine natural ambient sources with digital processes and circular droning textures. The introduction track is made of suspended electronic signals covered by an avalanche of eerie crashing noises. This is a slow moving piece, deeply suggestive that illustrates a nocturnal reverie in deep environmental space. Without transition the second piece provides subtle linear gestures in real abstraction obliterated by minimal concrete effects. In the background we van also perceive shadowy droning undulations. The track is gradually dissolved by atmospheric crackles and brutish (but not to much) electronic treatments. An other reflective and delicate ambient piece focused on decayed sound fragments and on an elaborate dissection of concrete natural sounds. The last composition closes the album with a quiet, meditative and mysterious minimalist piece using electro-acoustic treated sources and drawing semi-melodic lines that are flowing in a dreamy, spacious landscape. A other important document that stresses Luca Bergero's alchemic sense of writting.

Erimos is the name of a collaborative project released by Maurizio Bianchi (pionnier of noise & "bionic" electronic music) with Matteo Uggeri (Hue) and Luca Bergero (Fhievel). As suggested by the title, this record is a sonic metaphor of environmental paradise and meditational / most reflexive aspects of human life. Eremos means "hermitage" and solitary spiritual vocation. The album features a lot of electronic treatments, eerie drones punctuated by a great variety of sound objects. The atmosphere is colourfully repetitive, based on long droning phrases and micro interferences. Hue and Fhievel's usual microcospic embodied soundsculptures are perfectly combined with M.B's cloudy minimalism. Eremos includes a serie of coherent, controlled linear progressions that deliver a flow of musical energies. Fabulous psychedelectronics that edvocate interior reasonances of the self. Eremos is a window to the absolute, reaching a state of innocence and inifinite quiteness. It really deserves a listening in our turbulant, traumatic and under-expressive atomized world.

Recorded at Batu caves Hindu temples (Malaysia), Preguiera per una stella follows the oceanic, micro tonal ambiences of previous works but reach them into religious proportions. This album delicately focuses on contemplative, introspective gestures and mantra-like droning electronics. This extended drone epic is interesting in the way slow moving ideas are meticulously combined. Preguiera per una stella is a conceptual experience but also a vertiginous and spiritual musical ritual. This is minimalism avant garde music but the composition is apparently monochrome and monotonous. The long moving organic droning chords and never ending timbres hide micro elements and micro variations that transform the slow horizontal movements into a spiritual, cinematic drama. The melancholic tension redoubles in us the feeling of silence and isolation. Preguiera per una stella is a very special listening, we can internalize sounds that seem to be part of the psychic reality. This album is much more harmonious and simple that others Fhievel's works but the emotive content has never been so distinct. Unfortunately this album is a limited edition of 100 copies. A breathtaking effort that oscillates between Eliane Radigue trancey minimalism, Andrew Chalk's shimmering dark ambiences and Tangerine Dream's Zeit.

In this first release, Luca Bergero announces the basis of his mehod of composition and association of natural concrete sounds treated by electronic processes. Vetri Di Carta is certainly the most abstract, cryptical and conceptual album from Luca Bergero. This is a multidimensional album in touch with sound processing, kinetic waves and mathematic functions. Static sounds meet fractured electronic interferences. Disturbances and harmonies are mixed together to introduce use into a unique world of environmental sounds. For me this is absolute conrete music with imperceptible micro-sounds near to silence and sculptural-hypnotized timbres. This album can be a bit disappointed for those who are not familiar with structual and formal researches in eletro-acoustic music. A difficult listening with a lot of metaphoric sonic inclinations. Nevertheless it remains a warm decommendation for those who like subjective and fragmented concrete pieces from electro-acoustic searchers as Christian Calon (...) and silent-skeletal electronic compositions from Bernard Gunter.

— First review of this album —

Relatively distinct to the last new release The Wheel by the sound creator / sound sculptor Luca Bergero (Fhievel), Le Baptême De La Solitude presents a touching, moving and otherwordly electronic experience beautifully divided into three pieces. The opening theme features glacially shimmering drone textures, a kaleidoscope of burgeonning concrete noises, sustained by electronic signals. The second piece is a droney soundscape including a real foggy atmosphere, various sound objects treated in studio. The last composition is a somnambulic, static and warm experimental excursion, always combining splendid continuous sound forms and micro-processing of concrete noises. A subtle combination of sounds that directly haunts and sublimates our capacity of listening. Utterly beautiful! A very intimate, personal work made of tranquil, meditational and cerebral ambiences. This album can ravish those who are into the works released by the INA-GRM institution as well as those who dream on textural dark ambient minimalism.

Luca Bergero (Fhievel) and Luca Sigurta are two sound creators and artist-searchers specialised in minimalism sound sculptures focused on polytonal's physical characteristics. This last Fhievel's offering in collaboration with Luca Sigurta reveals an astonishing and complex orchestration of collages, micro-events, treated concrete sounds and omnious, sustained electronic textures. Their ability to create cinematic soundscapes reminds me academic researches published by modern classical artists (Alvin Lucier, Iannis Xenakis, Tod Dockstader...) and notably by inovative works made by the GRM (electro-acoustic excursions and scientific explorations on sound structures). The first piece is a sonic, rigorous minimalist piece with dreamy-like droning vibes, featuring a few micro accidents (taken from various sources). The next composition is a much more conceptual, paradigmatic piece paying attention to a serie of coherent concrete sounds mixed together in order to create an intense progression in tones, colours and motifs. It seems to be a vast genaology of sounds floating in deep space. The third composition follows the same path, injecting new sound captures. The last piece is an other burgeonning "concrete" orchestration whose sensations came from the choice and the combination of frequency, intensity and duration. The two composers continously select sound waves with carefulness and explore with precision the psychological-physical reactions to sensation-sound-form. They develop their ideas into a complex chain of visual, auditory associations. To summarize the wheel is a very pleasant listening, delivering quite immersive, profound environmental soundscapes.