My Italian avant-garde gumba is back with his third album, 'Chirurgia Sperimentale,' Experimental Surgery of the sonic variety, largely due to his "Cacophonator," a homemade instrument Luca built himself from a sewing machine with attached chassis and the addition of recycled materials, springs, hardware tools, toys etc. This bizarre instrument is responsible for a wide array of sounds first heard on his initial 2018 release, 'Vostra Signora Del Rumore Rosa.' Between that and this, Luca released an album with his avant garde rock band, Lovexpress, titled 'The Million Year Girl,' which is far less extreme than the others. 'Chirurgia Sperimentale' is ten tracks of the type of weirdness I've come to expect from Mr. Collivasone. The title track offers bass thumps, garbled processed voices and snippets of voices, synthetic sounds all frenetically swirling in some mind-altering stew. Crazy! Following this, "Harvest Like Cannibals" puts poetic recitation (in English) over a bass line similar to the main line in Gary Numan's "This Wreckage." Then there is some melodic(falsetto) singing. Somehow it all works together. "Venere All'improvviso" sounds sort of like the Kronos Quartet on acid, and "Linea Di Massima" continues in that vein employing some very cool bass figures among the other assorted sounds. Side A (we've got a vinyl record here!) ends with "Maelstrom" and while it might not be the sort of maelstrom you might expect, between the high plinks and low thumps is low vocal sounds reminiscent of what a didgeridoo can do. Is that a fuzz pedal on the Cacophonator offering up that sporadic distortion sound? I'm hearing familiar sounds that I didn't think a Cacophonator could even make! This is really heading into deep psych territory.

Turn the record over and Side B begins with "Un Secondo, Un Secondo" featuring Osada Yumi's shakuhachi with radio telegraphy style blips and other plucky and mucky sonics. "Monte Del Sole" puts the saw in its sawtooth bottom while echoey electronic nestlings warble a strange song. "Niente Caos, Dannazione" (No Chaos, Damn It!) may not have chaos, but it certainly has its share of strangeness. I love the quirky beat of "This Is The Last Word," a mostly spoken word piece over a beat and electronics, which are really the Cacophonator. Sort of makes me think of what Yello would be like if they decided to go full-tilt avant garde. HA! "Margine Galattico" (Galactic Edge) uneasily ends the album but what else would you expect? For fans of the avant garde, 'Chirurgia Sperimentale' is a very strong buy, not only because it seems very little new avant garde music seems to be released on vinyl these days (it's not profitable), but also because it sounds much better on vinyl. (Yes, I compared the record to digital.) The original artwork by Shintaro Kago( watercolor on fine paper) and graphic layout by Cristiano Battaggi is very cool too. 20 euros for as long as copies last, and tell 'em I sent you.