Wakeupandream - Next tours

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10245-poste-y-telegrafi/
Italian guitarist Alessandro "Asso" Stefana has gall. For his solo debut, Poste e Telegrafi, Stefana treats his guitar like a quarter-piece of the puzzle. He collaborates with six people and avoids the guitar altogether on two of these seven tracks. He alternately employs the 1980s electronics artifact the omnichord, a "strings machine," various African percussion instruments, and vinyl loops to build intricate, subtly shaped substrates for his meticulous, twang-redolent guitar fantasies. Largely because it avoids the solo guitar record template, Poste e Telegrafi is one of the most striking works you'll hear from a young composer all year. His guitar playing is graceful and dexterous, his fluid phrases are precise without feeling stiff. The cast here includes guitar maverick Marc Ribot, Italian songwriter Marco Parente, and Brian Eno/Nick Cave collaborator Leo Abrahams. The ends of Stafana's phrases, though, are about not perfecting the right note, but, instead, letting the assumed resolution arrive slightly altered. The climax, to wit, is one lonesome pedal steel note pushed through a web of effects. It sounds more like Glenn Branca conducting 100 guitars than one being built into something else entirely, like a cathedral carved from a single stone. These are rare talents for someone so young, and, given Poste e Telegrafi, Stefana sounds as if he'll be wielding them among the heavyweights for a long time to come. Rating: 7.8