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illàchime quartet is an instrumental ensemble founded in naples (italy) by fabrizio elvetico and gianluca paladino. it joins electronics and acoustic instruments. it gathers sounds and noises from the surroundings as well as scattered fragments of acoustic memories, which form the texture for the interventions of the musicians along rough and terse lines, often improvised. final target: to intrigue and to seduce the audience by means of an unconventional, highly kinematic sonic experience.

the band released its eponymous first album in 2004, then a contribute on the vol. 9 of bip_hop generation series (previous volumes of this compilation contained tracks by artists as murcof, scanner, mira calix, phonem). another release is planned for a compilation by the dublin-based label psychonavigation records.
the second album (february 2009), i'm normal my heart still works, is released by the italian labels fratto9/underthesky and lizard. some international artists have given their contribution to the album: mark stewart (voice of pop group and maffia), graham lewis (voice and bass player of wire), rhys chatham (avantgarde musician from new york) and salvatore bonafede (one of the most well-known italian jazzists).

through the last two years, the music of illachime quartet has stimulated imagination in other musicians. amongst them: mark stewart again, dirk dresselhaus a.k.a. schneider tm, retinat.it (a band that releases for the chicago based label hefty records), domenico sciajno (an electronic performer/composer who has worked with alvin curran, kim cascone, tim hodgkinson, cor fuller and many others) and emanuele errante (karaoke kalk, apegenine), and FERC (a side project by fabrizio elvetico from illachime and rossella cangini, an experimental vocalist from turin). the result is a new remix album out now (july 2012), named "sales".

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