Belfi / Grubbs / Pilia

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! Originally released on vinyl in 2010, Onrushing Cloud is the first recording by the trio of ANDREA BELFI (drums, percussion, electronics), DAVID GRUBBS (electric guitar, piano, voice), and STEFANO PILIA (electric guitar). Prior to meeting, all three had released recordings on the excellent Swedish label Häpna, and were already fans of one another’s work. In the spring of 2009, Belfi and Pilia were invited by the Harlem Studio Fellowship for a residence in New York, and the three took this opportunity to get down to the brass tacks of forming a power trio. Onrushing Cloud is characterized by the eccentric, fleeting symmetries of Grubbs’s and Pilia’s guitar playing simultaneously mediated, punctuated, and over and underscored by Belfi’s hybrid assemblage and deeply personal vocabulary of electronics and percussion. Although ultimately divided into five songs, this is clearly a single start-to-finish skein. “Hermitage” records the preliminary gestures of these musicians’ first encounter, and the album steadily builds towards the appearance of Grubbs’s vocals on “Onrushing Cloud,” a tale of being stranded atop a mountain and facing a rapidly approaching storm. (STREET DATE - 5/20/2014)