Upperground Orchestra is Rabih Beaini’s playground when it comes to stage diving and obscene perforative skills. He’s on electronics in a band full with gifted/lauded/vibrant members of Italy’s free jazz and improv scene Piero Bittolo Bon on woodwinds, Alvise Seggi on bass, Tommaso Cappellato and Daniele De Santis both on drums.
After a promoter double-booked two acts for a concert in an Italian squat in 2002, a truly magical impromptu jam session took place between the artists. Several more performances followed over the years, with the line-up evolving to its current status. Within loose scenarios of free jazz, krautrock, and deep cosmic jamming, in which Rabih’s experimental electronics, touching freeform between house and techno, meet the virtuosity of the instrumentalists – a chaos ensues which is relished and from which new planes are explored. True to the original core of improvisation, the Upperground Orchestra exists primarily as a live-experience, creating music with the individual energy of each place they play. With just a handful of releases to date, starting with ’Solaris Eremit’, released in 2008 on Beaini’s Morphine Records, epic remixes of Terrence Dixon’s ‘Room 310’ on Meakusma, 2012’s ‘The Eupen Takes’ LP and the re-imagination of Theo Parrish’s ‘Falling Up’ on Third Ear Recordings, Upperground Orchestra’s new LP Euganea is released in June 2019 on Morphine Records, featuring material previously recorded during a residency and live concert in Villa De Vescovi in Italy.
“Led by Lebanese DJ and musician Rabih Beaini, Upperground Orchestra hangs in the ether of Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid’s rapturous mid-2000s experiments. The Venetian group stitches heady electronic clicks, washes and whooshes in and out of its heart-racing free jazz.” – Viking’s Choice – NPR
Releases:
SOLARIS EREMIT
THE EUPEN TAKES
EUGANEA
Links:
Sajeta 2021
- STEM (Nmk)
- Isabelle Duthoit (Fra) & Jaka Berger(Slo)
- SEBASTIAN LEOPOLD (Aut)
- ANTHONY PATERAS (Aus)
- ISABELLE DUTHOIT (Fra)
- MAG (Swe)
- DARKO RUNDEK & EKIPA (Cro)
- ROZA (Srb)
- RICCARDO LA FORESTA (Ita)
- RABIH BEAINI (Lbn/Ger) & VINCENT MOON (Fra)
- FREE STELLAR TRIO (Slo/Ita)
- KOENIG – solo – MESSING (Aut)
- TROKUT (Slo/Cro)
- PureH (Slo)
- 3:RMA (Slo)
- KAČIS (Slo)
- NEMANJA (Cro)
- KAVASUTRA (Slo)
- VASILY KUZMICH (Ukr)
- JOONDROID (Npl)
- GORDAN (Ger/Srb)
- KRALJ ČAČKA (Srb)
- JAN NEMEČEK (Srb)
- UMBRA (Srb)
- STEFAN FRAUNBERGER (Aut)
- MARYLOU (Fra)
- MARTA DE PASCALIS (Ita)
- UPPERGROUND ORCHESTRA (Ita/Lbn)
- ŠKM BANDA (Slo)
- CARLO MASCOLO (Ita)