According to Hapna's supplementary information for this record, the Bolognese quartet were keen here to produce a series of songs composed during improvisations mixed with electroacustic 'post-production' processes that take place in real time instead of being introduced during a later phase. Care and attention was paid to how the sonic peculiarities of the environment were channelled through the customized recording equipment and how prerecorded material should be introduced into the sound. All of which feels a bit like a more detailed "No overdubs" sticker, but fair play to the group: the results more than justify their methodology.

In this respect, 3/4HadBeenEliminated are the antithesis of the sliced 'n' diced approach to song practised by Markus Popp and Eriko Toyoda as So; the heavily processed mosaics of The Books; and recent examples of 'music of correspondence' from Simon Fisher Turner and The Nevermet Ensemble. On A Year Of The Aural Gauge Operation, the way they mould all these elements into coherent pieces in the moment is all important.

"Wave Bye Bye To The King" finally resolves itself as a song fragment after seven minutes of slowly mutating layers of sound. Even at their most disrupted , these pieces are all about flow, a throughput of ideas through the psychic/acoustic space (of the group's apartment, in fact, where this was recorded) at a point in time. The word 'songs' is used rather loosely here: the pieces are predominantly slow and instrumental. While the four musicians - who utilise everything from acoustic instruments to electric guitar, to field recordings and electronics - produce something fairly close to conventional structures for parts of "Monkey Talk", they hit their peak on "Widower", where vocalist Valerio Tricoli's melodic utterances stand like marker posts around which these currents of sound eddy. The group use the word 'psychedelic' in its purest sense to describe their music, and they are right. This album is stimulating, fascinating and most definitely mind expanding. Mike Barnes, The Wire 265, March 2006.

3/4HadBeenEliminated was founded in Bologna, Italy, in 2002. Starting as a trio (guitarist/double bassist Stefano Pilia, turntablist/sound assembler Claudio Rocchetti, sound architect Valerio Tricoli) in 2004 the line up was extended to drummer Tony Arrabito.

Their first self titled record (bowindo, 2003) was released after playing a series of live concerts in which the group attention was strongly focused on the performative/theatrical/ecological aspects of the event: as starting point of the complex dramatic crescendo of the performance, 3/4 usually opened their concerts with amplifying a suspended bulky object of everyday life that they occasionally find at the location. Comprised of a large number of electronic and acoustic instruments, the album mirrors the disparate musical influences and aesthetics of the group. Live electronics, electroacoustic composition, field recordings, drones... All elements are here combined to "create a seven-part cycle of radiant acoustic imagery, with a sonic-methodology aimed at continuity rather than clash, and one that helps to create a fluid sound world, full of juxtapositions, but ones which provide an indecisive magical middle passage."

In the past two years, after exploring and experimenting with self invented recordings techniques and with drummer Tony Arrabito joining the band, 3/4's modus operandi focused on live interaction between electronic and acoustic instruments within a context in which the studio itself (tape machines, mixers, effects...) and the actual space in which the interaction take place (weird microphoning, feedbacks...) are considered and manipulated as instruments themselves (not by chance 3/4's are fans of musicians such as This Heat, P16.D4, Todd Rundgren...). In this process improvisation and group playing are the main issues, whereas 3/4's first release was more based upon electroacoustic découpage. The goal 3/4's are trying to reach is that of unifying in one moment the three steps of songwriting, recording, and electroacustic post-production: this is really clear in the band live performances where usually three of them (Rocchetti on turntables and electronics, Pilia on electric guitar and Arrabito on drums and percussion) are playing on the stage, while Tricoli is placed in the middle of the room, facing the stage and the loudspeakers, playfully live mixing and "engineering" the band sound through a bunch of dusty analogue effects, tape loops, drums triggered synthesizer... The result is powerfully tridimensional, the sonic quality always changing with the strongest dynamics.

3/4's new album, A Year Of The Aural Gauge Operation, was recorded in their own studio in Bologna along 2004. It features nine songs composed after live improvisations, all of them quite different in genre, but again 3/4's aim is to create a psychedelic musical flow, one in which new elements and different styles can be superimposed to enrich and develop the peculiar narrative of the album. We generally think of it as a opera.

"a collection of off-centre songs verging on psychedelia old and new, its sound is so dense that you need to blast it out at full volume to get the best from it. Guitars and drumming are conspicuous, even as they're counterweighted by the group's customary clicks and hums.This time voice is one of the main elements. At times it comes from a distance, as if thinned down by constant chiselling; elsewhere there are mourning chants, punctuated by constellations of percussive disturbance. Drowned in a sea of dark loops similar to Philip Jeck's darkest work, the effect can be ghostlike. In places the group drop fragments of attempted lyricism between scattered notes" (daniela cascella, TheWire)

Andrea Belfi was born in 1979. He has been playing drums since the age of fourteen. He studied art in Milan and has been working in the experimental music field since 2000. In 2002 AB embarked on a vast project, which, in time, would become Between Neck & Stomach. The first recordings took place at Valerio Tricoli's (member of 3/4HadBeenEliminated) house in Bologna. Between Neck & Stomach is grounded on two core elements: the first is the material collected during the unique experiment of turning a house into "a living creature with its own voice" (just one example: a synth emitting one continuous note shaking a cupboard filled with pots, pans and plates). The second core element is the choice of just one thematic note per song, around which each track is built and balanced. In this challenging album the acoustic elements and the electronic ones mingle, intertwine and sometimes switch places: the acoustic sounds are treated as they were electronic, and the actual electronic ones are played at the very moment. Rhythmic patterns go beyond the mere beat as AB shapes them in cycles, ever-circling but ever-changing, both reassuring and surprising. This album sketches imaginary landscapes where drums, guitars and voices blend into a bunch of eclectic tracks, which, in spite of their radical minimalist roots, are definitively worthy of the name 'songs'. Andrea Belfi's skills in composing and editing is electro acoustic works were clearly perceivable in his 2002 debut album, Ned n°2, warmly welcomed and well reviewed by magazines such as The Wire, Bananafish, Sound Projector.

ZimmerFrei is a multimedial ensemble founded in 1999 in Bologna, Italy, by Anna de Manincor (Trento, 1972), Anna Rispoli (Bassano del Grappa, 1974) and Massimo Carozzi (Massa, 1967). ZimmerFrei works in Bologna, Bruxelles and New York.

2005:
- Quando, Performance and live set, Italieniher Theaterherbst, Berlin, Germany
- Panorama Bologna, Voltone del Podestà, Palazzo Re Enzo, Bologna
- ZimmerFrei, Comptoir du Nylon, Bruxelles (B)

2004:
- panorama , Monitor video&contemporary art, Roma (I)

2002:
- N.K. - Never Keep Souvenirs of a Murder , InterAccess Gallery (Richmond 401), Toronto (CAN)
- Italian Insight, ICI Istituto di Cultura Italiana, Londra (GB)

Selected Group Shows:

2004:
- Group show at Exeggs Gallery, New York, curated by Daniela Lotta
- Empowerment , GAM Villa Croce, Genova, curated by Marco Scotini

2003:
- Sogni e conflitti, 50. mostra d'Arte Internazionale della Biennale di Venezia, Sezione La Zona, Giardini di Castello, Venezia, curated by Massimiliano Gioni