We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
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I have only been familiar with William Ryan Fritch's work for a couple of years, but he became one of my absolute favorite artists almost instantly. In fact, I have such unshakable faith in his vision that I even pounced on this lavish collection of works for film despite my similarly unshakable apathy towards soundtrack albums. My rational was that his first major release in two years had to be something truly special and the handful of pieces released in advance of the album seemed to bear that out. As it happens, the rest of this double album is every bit as wonderful as those teasers: Deceptive Cadence may very well be Fritch’s career-defining masterpiece. It certainly deserves to be, as Fritch approached it as a true labor of love, tirelessly revisiting, reworking, and paring down years of disparate projects until he had a gorgeously bittersweet tour de force of sublime grandeur.
The first volume of Deceptive Cadence arguably dates back from 2015, as many of these pieces were modestly released in digital-only format as Music For Film Vol. I.This latest incarnation has undergone quite a dramatic transformation between then and now though, as Fritch "dove back into Volume I, carving away the fat, leaving only the most breathtaking pieces from the original and replacing the rest with assuredly more mature and enduring compositions."Remarkably, that description is actually a bit of an understatement, as I estimate that at least half of that album did not survive Fritch's curatorial bloodbath.As for the remaining pieces, they have been re-edited, re-sequenced, and interspersed with newer works to form a beautifully flowing and coherent whole.That certainly seems like a quixotically labor-intensive endeavor, but I wish more artists would follow suit: for the purposes of this album, it does not matter when a piece was recorded or what film it may have appeared in.None of that information is even provided and that makes perfect sense to me.These pieces have all served their original purpose in the work of others, so now Fritch is free and willing to chop them up to suit a vision that is his alone.In the case of Deceptive Cadence, that vision is a kind of rustic Americana filled with rippling, sun-dappled arpeggios that blossom into boldly churning string melodies.The finest example of that sensibility is probably "A Renewed Sense," as cello and violin themes dance and intertwine en route to a swooning crescendo that verges on the rapturous.The soaring and poignant "Mending What We've Cleft" achieves a similar feat, but nearly every piece embodies the elusive lightness of touch necessary to achieve aching beauty and tenderness without ever erring into melancholy, bombast, or saccharine prettiness.There are easily three or four other pieces in the first volume that qualify as legitimate highlights (and zero pieces that I would skip).It is an absolute feast of lightness, warmth, and memorable melodies.
While Deceptive Cadence's second half seems to be composed entirely of more recent material, the transition between the two albums is very much a seamless one.In fact, the entirety of this collection feels like a hallucinatory director's cut of Westworld with all of the violence and plot excised to leave only a poetic and impressionist swirl of warm memories and majestic scenery.There is definitely more of an undercurrent of darkness with the newer material though, as well as a more varied approach to mood and structure.I would not necessarily say that it is more sophisticated, but it does feel like it has more of a deliberate arc and pace: it would not be completely crazy to characterize Vol. I as a melody-driven singles collection and Vol. II as its more abstract and atmospheric shadow.There are some notably exceptions though.The most striking one is "Ricochet," which begins with a half-thorny/half-twinkling jangle of overlapping mandolins that elegantly and seamlessly transforms into something resembling a Wild West wedding dance.Fritch does not stop there, however, and "Ricochet" continues to organically grow and evolve until it finally explodes into a soaring and vivid heaven of simultaneous ascending and descending melodies.Regrettably, it ends all too soon for my liking, but that is probably for the best as I probably would have died from pure joy if it had gone on any longer than three minutes.Elsewhere, I was struck by the haunting cello melody that rises from the warmly languorous dreamscape of "Gut Level.""Dumbstruck" is a highlight as well, as its early drones blossom into a churning and serpentine dance of darkly lovely strings. In general, however, the second volume feels like a sustained reverie, albeit one regularly punctuated by alternating interludes of brooding melody and shimmering, fluttering radiance.
I enjoy both volumes quite a bit, but it is the first volume that I could probably play in an infinite loop for days without ever growing weary of it.When he is at his best, Fritch's melodies and themes feel like a divine choreography that fluidly and airily swirls, sways, and dances, making it seem like transcending and dissolving conventional structure is the most natural and effortless thing in the world.Fritch is the rarest form of iconoclast: the kind who carves out a truly wonderful and distinctive niche solely by bringing together obvious threads that few others have managed to convincingly combine before (and executing that feat masterfully).
In a way, Deceptive Cadence feels like a glimpse of an alternate timeline in which modern classical music never became mired in increasingly challenging sounds and ambitious concepts.Instead, it devotedly remained in pursuit of pure beauty, but learned a few things along the way from the looseness, simplicity, and soul of Bob Dylan and the starry-eyed romanticism of vintage Hollywood cinema.Fritch is not shy about exploiting his formidable gifts for arrangement or production enhancements, yet he has an uncanny intuition for allowing just the right themes to remain raw enough to make a direct emotional impact.These pieces often sound like the work of tight traditional folk ensemble that has been elevated into something unnaturally lush, layered, and dreamlike by the hands of a great drone artist who has been very careful not to lose their earthy, lyrical essence.Moreover, the bulk of Deceptive Cadence resembles a soundtrack only stylistically, evoking a vivid, living world on its own rather than feeling like one decontextualized aspect of a larger work.This is an ambitious, complete, and extraordinary work all by itself.If anything else comes along in the next six months to unseat Deceptive Cadence as one of my favorite albums of the year, it will have to be one hell of a revelatory release.
Luke Younger has been increasingly ambitious in reinventing the Helm aesthetic with each fresh release over the last several years, but this latest release still caught me off-guard a bit: the bulk of Chemical Flowers is very different from the killer single ("I Knew You Would Respond") that preceded its release. To some degree, that admittedly fits Younger's pattern, as each of his EPs tends to feature one brilliant centerpiece surrounded by the more expected post-industrial sound collages. Though it is a full-length (and one that features string arrangements from JG Thirlwell), Chemical Flowers more or less replicates that same approach by simply doubling the amount of collages. That is perfectly fine by me, as I tend to enjoy Younger's abstract side almost as much as his beat-driven side and he is in especially fine form here. These collages are quite a bit different than usual though, as it sounds like there are a handful of '70s or '80s New Age/ambient albums lurking at the heart of Flowers that have been scorched, warped, and mangled beyond recognition.
I can think of few current artists who have pleasantly surprised me more often than Luke Younger in recent years, as the only consistent thread among his last several releases is that he is remarkably gifted at seamlessly pulling divergent influences into an aesthetic that can roughly be described as "post-industrial."He also has an especially excellent ear for sounds and textures, though I never know where those sounds will be coming from or how they will be structured.I thought I had an inkling of the direction this album would take after learning of Thirlwell's involvement and hearing the haunting and lyrical Middle Eastern melodies of "I Knew You Would Respond," but Chemical Flowers turned out to be a strange and shifting mirage that defies simple description.That is by design, of course, as one of the album's stated themes is the fluctuation of "temporal and spatial boundaries."In that regard, the opening "Capital Crisis (New City Loop)" does a fine job of making it clear what I am in for, as the first minute is a mind-melting descent into a cacophony of gibbering electronics, warped gong-like textures, and nightmarishly plunging strings.More glibly put, it sounds like a plane is about to crash-land on a Zoviet France album.After that initial plunge, however, a more structured piece emerges as a miasma of unsettling insectoid textures and strangled horns unfolds over a see-sawing two-chord synth motif.That "ethno-ambient" or "sci-fi tribal" aesthetic resurfaces a few more times over the course of the album and I am quite fond of it.
With "I Knew You Would Respond," however, Younger creeps into the more polished Fourth World territory of Jon Hassell and Richard Horowitz, as Thirlwell's exotic and sensuous strings are combined with a muscular, laid-back groove in an unconventional raga.It would be a stretch to say that Younger has gone pop though, as his uncharacteristically hooky groove is increasingly strafed by skittering and squirming electronic textures.In a weird way, that piece feels like a battleground of sorts and once the dust settles, it is clear that the forces of deconstruction and abstraction have handily vanquished Younger's more structured side.The next few pieces still tenaciously cling to a pulse of sorts, however.In "Body Rushes," a looping string motif provides the backbone for a steadily intensifying storm of sickly synths, backwards loops of jabbering noise, and stuttering percussive throbs."Leave Them All Behind," on the other hand, is a bit more sublime and meditative, as a skipping bass thrum provides a hypnotic backdrop for a gently hallucinatory swirl of water sounds and out-of-focus smears of dissonant synth tones. By the time the album gets to its final third, however, the bottom has definitively dropped out and any semblance of structure or melody is quickly and mercilessly mutilated.The most striking example of that trend is "Lizard in Fear," which sounds a tape player violently chewing up an '80s New Age synth album while I am being assailed by extra-dimensional horrors in a nightmarish swamp.The following "Toxic Racehorse" then replaces the vivid and disturbing textures of that hallucinatory swamp with a droning void populated only by sickly, plunging, and strangled strings hellbent on wresting away my last vestiges of sanity.
Instead of sinking deeper and deeper into that dark place, however, the album ends on an ambiguous upturn with the lysergic, neon-lit synth reverie of the title piece."Chemical Flowers" is unlike anything else on the album, as it has a structured and melodic center, but that center is a very late '70s/early '80s synth motif that perfectly captures bleary, artificial sound that was briefly in vogue for horror and science fiction movie soundtracks.That theme gradually becomes fleshed out with some warmer synth pads and strings, but the fragile beauty is endlessly curdled by passing dissonances and ugly pitch shifts.It calls to mind the opening scenes of a George Romero film in which people are going about their daily lives blissfully unaware that they will soon be enthusiastically devoured by a horde of zombies.That is an apt reference in a broader sense as well, as my overall impression of Chemical Flowers is that it sounds like an album made by someone deep into early and mid-'80s underground culture, but with technology and a breadth of esoteric influences that no one from that era would have had.If Younger could build a time machine and release Chemical Flowers on Staaltape in 1986, it would easily (and deservedly) be one of the defining releases of the era.Until he manages that, he will just have to content himself with being one of the consistently intriguing and restlessly creative artists making abstract electronic music in 2019.Some other recent Helm releases admittedly hit higher highs than this one, but I am hard-pressed to think of any that are as consistently strong or achieve such a focused and evocative vision.
My Cat is an Alien has always been very much an "outsider art" phenomenon, as the Opalio brothers have spent the last two decades tirelessly conjuring and reshaping a hermetic alternate reality replete with its own unique philosophy and cosmology. In the process, they have released some truly original and beguiling auditory dispatches from their remote home in the Alps, but music is just one part of their larger vision and that vision has drawn increasing interest from the art world. For this latest release, the brothers unveil a new collaborative imprint with gallerist and publisher Marco Contini that seeks to bring the various threads of the their artistry together into a focused and harmonious whole. That endeavor is off to an excellent start, as Spiritual Noise is quite an impressive achievement as an art object. It is also an excellent album, as each of the two lengthy pieces unveils a fresh new facet of the duo's deep space trance states.
The opening "Spiritual Apocalypse" unquestionably earns at least half of its title, as it sounds like a vast, shambling intergalactic entity trudging slowly across space and time.If I were ever to accidentally reawaken one of the Old Ones by foolishly reading a cursed incantation from The Necronomicon aloud, I would definitely expect to hear sounds in a very similar vein right before the sun was blotted out and the screaming began.Uncharacteristically, "Spiritual Apocalypse" is a very percussion-driven piece, as its cumulative power centers around a slow yet relentless rhythm of seismic thuds and their shuddering aftermath.There is a bit more to the piece than just the steady approach of a world-eating juggernaut, however, as bits of structure gradually start to emerge from the miasma of deep throbs and eerily harmonizing layers of warbling, spectral vocals.Some additional entropy creeps into the scene as well, as the aftershocks seem to feed back into each other to create a host of new echoes and reverberations.Those slow and seamless transformations beautifully set the stage for quite a brilliant final act.In the piece's last five minutes, the slow-burning escalation of tension and dread transcendentally blossoms into a darkly lysergic feast of buzzing synth tones, feedback whines, and the gorgeously wounded, warped ripples of some homemade guitar-like instrument.I am tempted to describe it as something like "pure phantasmagoric brilliance," but it is far too broken-sounding and unsettling to be considered "pure" anything.I will grudgingly settle for "impure phantasmagoric brilliance" instead.
While Maurizio and Roberto tone down the cosmic horror quite a bit for the album’s second half, "Noise Deliverance" does share its predecessor's focus on rhythm to some degree.In fact, it sounds weirdly dub-influenced, as the skipping pulse resembles the crackles of vinyl looped and fed through some effects pedals.The other similarity between the two pieces is Roberto's omnipresent haze of ghostly cooing vocals.The mood and trajectory of "Noise Deliverance" are quite a bit different than "Spiritual Apocalypse," however, as it feels like I am slowly becoming submerged into swirling, disorienting, and vividly phantasmal pool of bizarre and ravaged sounds.The unlikely heart of the piece lies in an obsessively see-sawing motif of strangled feedback buzzes.It is both naggingly insistent and uncomfortably dissonant, but I found myself mentally clinging to it like a life-preserver as the only reliably constant feature in a chaotic and unfamiliar landscape of chirping and whooshing space toys.It is the sort of intense and difficult listening experience that few others artists could possibly get away with: the Opalios drop me the middle of a viscerally queasy and harrowing nightmare, but it is such a richly textured and vibrantly alive one that I cannot turn away from it.
After regularly immersing myself in the otherworldly vision of My Cat is an Alien for the last several years, I sometimes forget how incredibly far beyond recognizable, earthbound sounds the Opalios have traveled in their twenty years of recording.Aside from Roberto's spectral signature vocals, Spiritual Noise feels like it could have been crafted almost entirely from haunting and mysterious transmissions picked up by the SETI institute.That said, the Opalios' unique approach to melody and harmony is even more impressive than their unique choice of sounds.They have somehow managed to erase the entire accumulated musical wisdom of human civilization from their minds in order to start fresh with a radically different sensibility all their own.That is an incredible feat in general, but it is even more remarkable that something actually listenable emerged from such a categorical rejection of all things familiar to human ears.There are no recognizable chords, there are no recognizable scales (Western or Eastern), there are no recognizable instruments, and there are absolutely no apparent influences from other artists.Obviously, all of those things are true for quite a lot of MCIAA releases, but that has not stopped Roberto and Maurizio from tirelessly honing and perfecting their vision.That is what makes Spiritual Noise a significant new entry in MCIAA's extensive discography.My favorite albums have always been their massive, reality-dissolving epics like Psycho-System and Abstract Expressionism for the Ears, but this release continues the trend of The Dance of Oneirism towards a more distilled dose that retains roughly the same power.Both of these pieces (especially "Noise Deliverance") are mind-bombs detonated with surgical precision, seemingly firing up long-dormant synapses in hopes of processing the unexpected onslaught of bizarre auditory stimuli and the similarly unfamiliar sensations they trigger.Record store shelves are full of well-meaning bearded men wielding tablas and tamburas, hellbent on prying open my third eye or kicking down my doors of perception.Some of them have made some absolutely wonderful albums, but none have gone as far as My Cat is an Alien.
It is with tremendous pleasure that we announce Resonant Field, the brand new full-length album from New York-based sound artist and composer Lea Bertucci. Following up her critically acclaimed 2018 NNA full-length Metal Aether, Lea continues her devotion to the exploration of physical spaces by way of sound, channeled through her alto saxophone. Where her previous work investigated a variety of locations around the globe, Resonant Field narrows her focus to one space in particular - the Marine A Grain Elevator at Silo City in Buffalo, New York. Using her horn, Lea awakens certain resonances within the space which have laid dormant and forgotten for decades. In this sense, Resonant Field is the documentation of a human's profoundly personal interaction with an inanimate space through the medium of sound.
The decommissioned structure at Silo City is a massive, cavernous space filled with large cast concrete cylinders, measuring approximately 18 feet wide and 130 feet tall. A grain silo that was once active, noisy, loud, and filled with kinetic energy now lays dormant as a silent, hulking concrete corpse, as is the case with many industrial sites across the United States. Through playing her saxophone inside this structure, Bertucci's goal was to excite and activate the space by playing certain pitches and extended techniques. By engaging with the acoustics in this manner, particularly the 12 seconds of natural decay, Bertucci is able to reimagine the saxophone as a polyphonic instrument, creating unique effects of microtonality and complex rhythmic phenomena, facilitated by the distinct delay as the sound bounces from one end of the silo to the other. Her microtonal playing moves delicately through the octaves, creating an interactive, responsive dance up and down the frequency scale. These overlapping tones form an extreme density and fills the ears and head with an eternal buzz, while also revealing an array of fluttering psychoacoustic phenomenon to the listener. By using these raw recordings of saxophone as the foundation for more intricate studio compositions, Resonant Field transcends mere documentation and evolves into a focused, comprehensive and total work at the hands of the artist.
Due to the specific architectural and sonic conditions of the Marine A Grain Elevator, Lea has captured new, never-before-heard sounds that truly cannot be duplicated by any other means. Her playing is improvisatory and reactive to the space’s unique acoustics. By allowing imperfections to exist within the recordings, the compositions evoke a distinct rawness and vulnerability. Free of premeditation or calculation, there is an emotional surrender to the bestial, monumental atmosphere and presence of Silo City. This formation of an intimate connection with her surroundings is both scientific and spiritual, putting Lea in a duality of roles as both an archaeologist of sound and as a sonic medium. The fact that these recordings took place during the partial solar eclipse of 2017 further contributes to the ceremonial, ritual quality of the work, making Resonant Field a profound, industrial meditation on beauty, emptiness, and the deep melancholy of forgotten spaces.
Richard Skelton has spent the last two years living on the rural northern edge of the Scotland-England border, a boundary demarcated by various watercourses - among them the Kershope Burn, the Liddel Water and the River Esk. This hinterland topography has informed a series of musical recordings which, in their brevity, stand in stark contrast to the longform compositions for which he is more usually known. Nevertheless, there is a sense that these twelve miniatures are fragments of a larger whole, such is their unity in tone and timbre.
In some ways, Border Ballads can be seen as a revisiting of certain compositional processes first encountered on Marking Time, over a decade ago. The sparse, overlapping bowed notes, for example, or the solitary, bell-like piano. But there is something different at work here. Whereas Marking Time felt aeolian, shifting, fleeting, this new work, with its persistent cello undertow and its low, tremulous viola, feels telluric, grounded, earthen. Perhaps Border Ballads can be seen as the embodiment of a desire for certainty after a prolonged period of upheaval, but that ever-close riverine border, at once both fixed and fluid, is a disturbing presence. A darkness that cannot be ignored.
A new work by David Jackman (Organum), Herbstsonne consists of a single 47 min. long track which is the result of recording sessions at RMS Studios South London in 2018.
Using the sounds of Tanpura, Piano, Organ and Bells the music perfectly captures the title of the piece which translates to Autumn Sun.
Precision editing by Alan Jones. Excellent artwork by Jonathan Coleclough.
CD edition of 300 copies, in Digisleeve packaging.
Visit Die Stadt or contact the label via e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for additional information.
"Co-habitant treads on most sensitive melodic nerves in their exquisite debut and sole release for Chained Library.
The eponymous Co-habitant release trades in a distinct style of filigree, pealing, high-register electronic minimalism that uses sparse ingredients to absorbingly meditative effect.
The A-side’s swaying figure in "a.003" is a particular highlight that we could easily listen to on loop for hours, while the B-side has us utterly rapt with the transition from mechanical rhythmelody and fascinating reverberant overtones in "b.002" thru the isolationist SAW II tingles of "b.003" and the sallow ripples of "b.004.""
-via Boomkat
Additional information can arguably be found here.
The city of Belém, in the Northern state of Pará in Brazil, has long been a hotbed of culture and musical innovation. Enveloped by the mystical wonder of the Amazonian forest and overlooking the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, Belém consists of a diverse culture as vibrant and broad as the Amazon itself. Amerindians, Europeans, Africans - and the myriad combinations between these people - would mingle, and ingeniously pioneer musical genres such as Carimbó, Samba-De-Cacete, Siriá, Bois-Bumbás and bambiá. Although left in the margins of history, these exotic and mysteriously different sounds would thrive in a parallel universe of their own.
I didn't even know of the existence of that universe until an Australian DJ and producer by the name of Carlo Xavier dragged me deep into this whole new musical world. Ant it all began in Belém do Pará. Perched on a peninsula between the Bay of Guajará and the Guamá river, sculpted by water into ports, small deltas and peripheral areas, Belém had connected city dwellers with those deeper within the forest providing fertile ground for the development of a popular culture mirroring the mighty waters surrounding it. Through the continuous flow of culture, language and tradition, various rhythms were gathered here and transformed into new musical forms that were simultaneously traditional and modern.
Historically marginalized African religions like Umbanda, Candomblé and the Tambor de Mina, which had reached this side of the Atlantic through slaves from West Africa – especially from the Kingdom of Dahomey, currently the Republic of Benin – left an indelible stamp on the identity of Pará's music. They would give birth to Lundun, Banguê and Carimbó, styles later modernised by Verequete, Orlando Pereira, Mestre Cupijó and Pinduca to great effect. The success of these pioneers would create a solid foundation for a myriad of modern bands in urban areas.
Known as the "Caribbean Port," Belem had been receiving signal from radio stations from Colombia, Surinam, Guyana and the Caribbean islands - notably Cuba and the Dominican republic - since the 1940s. By the early 1960s, Disc jockeys breathlessly exchanged Caribbean records to add these frenetic, island sounds to liven up revelers. The competition was fierce as to who would be the first to bring unheard hits from these countries. The craze eventually reached local bands' repertoires, and Belém's suburbs got overtaken by merengue, leading to the creation of modern sounds such as Lambada and Guitarrada.
To reach a larger audience, the music needed to be broadcast. Radios began targeting the taste of mainstream audiences and played music known as "music for masses". As the demand for this music grew, it led to the establishment of recording companies. Belém's infant recording industry began when Rauland Belém Som Ltd was founded in the 1970s. It boosted a radio station, a recording studio, a music label and had a deep roster of popular artists across the carimbó, siriá, bolero and Brega genres.
Another important aspect in understanding how the musical tradition spread in Belém, are the aparelhagem sonora: the sound system culture of Pará. Beginning as simple gramophones connected to loudspeakers tied to light posts or trees, these sound systems livened up neighbourhood parties and family gatherings. The equipment evolved from amateur models into sophisticated versions, perfected over time through the wisdom of handymen. Today's aparelhagens draw immense crowds, packing clubs with thousands of revelers in Belém's peripheral neighbourhoods or inland towns in Pará.
The history of Jambú e Os Míticos Sons Da Amazônia is the history of an entire city in its full glory. With bustling nightclubs providing the best sound systems and erotic live shows, gossip about the whereabouts of legendary bands, singers turned into movie stars, supreme craftiness, and the creativity of a class of musicians that didn't hesitate to take a gamble, Jambú is an exhilarating, cinematic ride into the beauty and heart of what makes Pará's little corner of the Amazon tick. The hip swaying, frantic percussion and big band brass of the mixture of carimbó with siriá, the mystical melodies of Amazonian drums, the hypnotizing cadence of the choirs, and the deep, musical reverence to Afro-Brazilian religions, provided the soundtrack for sweltering nights in the city's club district.
The music and tales found in Jambú are stories of resilience, triumph against all odds, and, most importantly, of a city in the borders of the Amazon who has always known how to throw a damn good party.
Debut release by the new ANTIGRAVITATIONAL imprint, the record label & multimedia platform created and curated by My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA), set up with gallerist and publisher Marco Contini.
"MCIAA PHASE THREE — WE BAPTIZE THE SPIRITUAL NOISE" reads Roberto Opalio’s aesthetics Manifesto: SPIRITUAL NOISE opens the third decade of activity by iconoclastic instantaneous composers, musicians, performers and visual artists Maurizio and Roberto Opalio.
Fully focused on MCIAA’s "aliencentric" vision, Antigravitational’s main purpose is to offer the experience of the deepest immersion in the sound and visual matter of each work of intermedia art by the brothers–as duo, as soloists, as well as in collaborations with some of the most talented artists of our time.
Pursuing their ongoing fight against the digital-only fruition of concepts and contents of today, MCIAA privilege the thingness of physical mediums to fix their art, aiming to survive the non-permanence over time.
Designed following principles of seriality and of installation art, each release takes the shape of a multimedia object which displays a proper artbook mounted on the LP cover jacket, and gives access to cinematic poetry films and extra contents as further investigations. Various combinations of objects and formats are intended to provide an ever-expanding universe of multistratified references and meanings.
The album opens on a deceptively creepy note, as "Untroduction" cultivates a palpable sense of impending menace with its gnarled, sweeping synth drones and cryptic samples from a psychological experiment.Unexpectedly, however, it segues into a killer party rather than bleakly futuristic alienation, as "Pin Drop" unleashes quite an amazing variation on the classic "amen break." Musically, Dangers and Ben Stokes flesh out their brilliantly clattering groove with a deep bass line, some blurrily surreal chords, and a ghostly melody, but none of those elements are the real focus.The hyper-kinetic drumming is the heart of the piece and everything else is mere icing on the cake.In fact, "Pin Drop" fondly reminds me of all of the times I have been wandering around a city and stumbled upon an insanely virtuosic and funky drummer going absolutely bananas in a park or square.The beat itself is a familiar one, of course, yet Dangers and Stokes keep it fresh and wild with a vibrant array of fills.There are also some occasional surprises like the fleeting intrusion of a toasting MC that add nicely to the sense that the whole thing is about to careen off the rails at any second.It never does, of course, but does a glorious job of riding that line til the very end.Wisely, the duo refrain from ever trying to repeat the same magic formula, but they do return to Jungle-style break beats a couple more times with fresh twists.On the more nervous-sounding "No Design," for example, the frenetic snares are augmented by disorienting swirl of robotic, chopped, and stuttering voices."Critical Soul Vibrations," on the other hand, sounds geared for the dancefloor: the robot voices feel more like hooks and there are some fairly musical and jazzy vocal samples that provide welcome human warmth.
The rest of the album can roughly be divided into two categories that are best described as "robot funk" and "minimalist electronic jazz," though there are a handful of detours into brooding atmospheric vignettes, brief synthesizer experiments, and more industrial-minded fare scattered about.Some of the more polished and jazz-influenced pieces admittedly leave me cold, but highlights improbably come from every one of those directions at least once.Meat Beat's "robot funk" side is perhaps best represented by the lumbering groove and squirming, sputtering electronics of "CarrierFreq," which also features a weirdly poignant hook of a digitized voice lamenting "I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do."A far more unlikely pleasure is "Forced to Lie," which marries blurred and warped jazz chords with a trip-hop beat…and a repeating loop of Wolfman Jack addressing some "birdbrains."Elsewhere, a thumping house beat relentlessly propels the wonderfully jabbering and gurgling synths of "Present For Sally," while Dangers' distorted and deconstructed "rapping" adds an unpredictable and texturally vibrant splash of color to an insistent, industrial-damaged pulse in "[Ear-Lips]."Meat Beat's jazzier side offers some pleasures as well, though that side tends to work best when its smoothness it counterbalanced by erratic, deranged-sounding synth patterns (which is the happily the case in "Call Sign").Without that element of chaos, the jazzier touches walk a precariously fine line between endearingly woozy "space age bachelor pad" sounds and something that I could easily imagine getting licensed for a fashion runway show.For the most part, however, I very much appreciate the sophisticated approach to harmony on the album.There is a lot of underutilized ground between straight-up major and minor chords and Meat Beat are unusually adept at exploiting it (as far as electronic music artists are concerned, anyway).