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Andrea Belfi is a drummer and an electroacoustic musician & composer.
He was born in Italy in 1979.
He started studying drums at the age of 14, and has featured in various punk/hardcore bands ever since.
Between 1998 and 2001 he lived in Milan where he attended Alberto Garutti's contemporary art course, who helped him develop a wider understanding of art.
In 2000 he co-founded Rosolina Mar, an instrumental rock trio, whose albums have been released by the Italian label Wallace Records. With this rock-band he toured around Italy, France and Spain, playing over 200 gigs.
In the meantime he studied elettroacustic composition and improvvisation.
In 2002 he self-produced, with his own label Chocolateguns, his first solo record “Ned n°2” , which received excellent reviews (The Wire, Bananafish).With the same label he produced in 2004 the band Kriminal Museum (Zeno de Rossi, Jamie Saft, Ted Reichman, Biggan Krauss).
He is a fouding member of Medves, which features also Giuseppe Ielasi, Francesco Dillon Wanke, Stefano Pilia and Renato Rinaldi.
Medves LP was released in 2005 by Fringesrecordings.
Since 2003 Belfi has been developing a solo liveset, where he uses his drummer’s skills along with his long-time researches with electroacustic devices and synthezisers.
His second solo album “Between Neck & Stomach” was released in September 2006 by the swedish label Hapna.
This album was well reviewed by magazines and net ’zines such as The Wire, Vital Weekly, Boomkat, All Music Guide.
“The real victory of Belfi’s astonishing record is the ease of its cohabitation of melody and experiment. Few do it so well” (Jon Dale, December 2006, the Wire magazine)
He has been touring along Europe presenting this album, with label mates and long time collaborators ¾hasbeeneliminated during 2006’s fall, playing in Stockholm, Paris, Gent, London, Geneva, Berlin and many other cities.
From 2005 he started a new project called Christa Pfangen, named after (but consciously misspelled) Andy Warhol's muse Nico. Christa Pfangen is a duo featuring Andrea and the guitar player Mattia Coletti. The two recorded the CD “Watch me getting back the end”, released in January 2007 by Die Schachtel, which entered in the list of the ten most listened records published by The Wire in March 2007. Christa Pfangen played in Holland and Belgium and featured in the radio program Dwars for the Holland national broadcasting system VPRO.
From 2004 Andrea collaborates also with HomeMovies, an association which collects and re-assembles old family movies: Andrea's role, often along with Stefano Pilia and Valerio Tricoli, is to play over these silent movies, in an attempt to join yet enrich (in a very post-modern way) the tradition of the live orchestras which used to perform in the cinemas during the silent movies era.
Between 2006 and 2008, Belfi conceived the project Stillivingrooms which later on developed a visual side under the supervision of Mirco Santi. Stillivingrooms is a performance/sound installation, where conceptual (familiarity, sense of belonging and protection)and actual elements (walls ans windowpanes, forniture and doors) belonging to the domestic space are re-discussed and re-shaped in odd, half-reassuring half-enstranging ways. It has been presented at Netmage Festival in Bologna (January 2008), and at the Claudio Buziol Foundation kick-off party in Venice (May 2008),
His last solo record called “Knots”, recorded & produced by Giuseppe Ielasi, it has been released by Die Schachtel records in January 2008.
He performed it as a live set in Turin (Artissima 2007), Chicago (Lampo), Aalst (Netwerk), Stockholm, Oslo among others.
Andrea's constant concern and interest, as one can clearly see from the whole of his work, is the live and performative moment though treated and shaped in different and challenging ways.
He has been playing and/or collaborating with Giuseppe Ielasi, ¾hadbeeneliminated. Valerio Tricoli, Damo Suzuki, Tony Conrad, Nicola Ratti, Dean Roberts, Atelier MTK(Metamkine), Stefano Pilia, Å, Claudio Rocchetti, Xavier Garcia Bardon (aka Saoule), Alessandro Bosetti. Xabier Iriondo, Mattia Coletti, Renato Rinaldi, Larkin Grimm, Rhys Chatham, Benjamin Franklin.
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