CATTANEO, Andrea Lombardini, and Tim Lefebvre Release “Hypersphere”

by Kevin Johnson Wednesday, May 29th, 2024

CATTANEO, Andrea Lombardini, and Tim Lefebvre: Hypersphere Paolo Cattaneo (aka CATTANEO) and Andrea Lombardini have been working together since 2016, but for their latest release, they added the magic ingredient we call Tim Lefebvre. Hypersphere is an EP from the trio that morphs bass, guitar, and synthesizers to elicit “a rock take, depicting dark moods and ethereal landscapes.”

While Lefebvre is a monster of the bass, he was brought into the project as a producer and guitarist. The change of pace was welcome for him.

“I was excited to work with Cattaneo and Andrea Lombardini because of their sense of sound and adventure,” he said. “And I love producing so it was cool to not play bass on this record. Cattaneo has a genius sense of ambient pop electronica, as does Andrea. So it was fun to put down sounds that I felt were needed on this record. I love how it came out! “

The bass was instead handled by Lombardini, who lays down tasty grooves that lift the music. He gave us the full scoop on the record and his bass work.

“‘Hypersphere’ is the result of several improvisations recorded by me and Paolo[ Cattaneo] and then post produced and enhanced (he played some guitar on it) by Tim Lefebvre,” he explains. “I’ve brought a few four string basses in Paolo’s studio as I usually do: a 1964 Fender Precision with Dogal flatwound string, an Ibanez Destroyer with a Lace Riffblaster pickup strung with Dogal nickel rounds, an Ibanez EHB short scale and a Music Man Stringray fretless with Dogal carbon steel rounds. The main goal was to create song forms on the spot so I concentrate creating grooves and lines that would imply actual chord changes. In a few tracks I did some overdubs of lead lines in the style of Peter Hook (like on ‘Vibing’ and ‘Stretch’), but I tried to stay away from soloing. Several effects pedals where used, for my Moog-ish sound I go for an old BOSS OC-2 (‘Sentinel Peak’) followed by drive (light octafuzz) and time based effects. I really like the Ibanez Airplane Flanger used as chorus. On the ballad Hypershere I used an EHX ring modulator to further push the enigmatic sound of the tune, masking the root notes. All bass is recorded direct out of my beloved API Channels trip. When playing with Cattaneo I try to play pretending I’m a producer who picks blocks from a samples library, it’s a real time musical-LEGO playground between two people.”

Get a taste of the album with the opening track, “Vibing”: