I just listened to the first one of 50 numbered copy of "VLAD - Looks to Europe in flames" the second musical work of Noisedelik, a project founded by my friend, and musician, Massimo Olla of Cagliari (Italy)
It 'a self-CDR self-produced for its NDK Recordz, but it comes with a beautiful appearance and a very fine packaging really superior to that of certain label far more noble. And also during the first listen of this album, I'm really pleasantly surprised by its sound.
I'm living in the same city and I know the author for some time. Last year I also listened to her debut album, entitled "The 9 Obsessions". I'd considered his previous work very bitter and almost youthful, although the author has more than forty years. The previous disc of Noisedelik, 'The 9 Obsessions' was the result of a sincere musical passion but suffered from the initial enthusiasm with all the ingenuity of more recent infatuation for industrial sounds by his author. Massimo Olla comes in fact from a personal past of rock music and approached only recently at the direct production of this strange kind of sounds and noises with a recognizable industrial matrix.
This second album instead, in my opinion and unlike the previous one, represent not only a strong personal growth of the author, but is also an important musical work. A resulting evidence of a greater compositional technique and of a strong awareness. Which would have been difficult to obtain, for some musicians, without taking a course of many years. Massimo obtain this personal maturation of his sound, into this hard kind of musical niche, the industrial productions, managed to do it in just two years only. I think I deserve it, for that reason alone, our greatest respect.
I speak now more details on this record and say that this album sound like a very professional product and have a very good mastering. Except for some very little small drops I listen in some places during the tracks (I think are a possible result of unwanted errors during the homemade cdr-burning).
Noisedelik humbly told me that the disk mastering not only a result of his technique but is the work of an Italian musician important as Gianluca Becuzzi who collaborate also with Massimo into the last track of this album. A friend of his and ours too. Becuzzi is an italian well known electronic musician and it is certainly one that not needs many presentations. I think his work, at mastering, really make the difference. Many other musicians and friends collaborate into this work. They are: Dalila Kayros, Svart1, Urna, Gianluca Martucci.
Returning at the sound compositions, the first 2 tracks are titled "The problem defeat me" and "Narcisism ambient" and open in generous way the entire work, preparing the listener to listen to the central body of the disc. Those tracks are two electro-acoustic pieces, with many ambient sounds and particularly suitable as a musical introduction. I state that also the song titles are the ones I inferred from their digital tag because unfortunately there are not, into the disc cover, notes or others information about the tracks.
The majority of sounds presents into the disc keep this electro-acoustic imprint which develops along a strong use of drones and growing of many different sampled sounds. The sound structures of different songs have always more levels and a very intriguing ambient of carpet sounds are interspersed with details of rhythmic episodes that are never out of place or dissonant. Even when some drum loops are strangely off-cut, perhaps deliberately as in the case of the beautiful track titled 'Ancestral Kebab' (featuring Svart1), add new colors and the songs playing nicely crooked.
The third track titled in Italian 'Cenere e menzogna' (Ashes and Lie, featuring Dalila Kayros)) is the only one who has an important vocal presence and have also a text in Italian. It's not a real song because the voice is distorted and filtered during a sort of banal exercise of 'spoken word'. But this use of reading and vocals however, in my humble opinion, cannot be reconciled with the rest of sounds who create an interesting plot and this track, for this reason, is the less successful episode of the entire work.
Except this track less successful, all other tracks keep their unaltered and quite the high level of attraction of this disc. But I would point out, in particular, the two central tracks entitled 'The Vlad Suspicion' and 'To chain a dog up'. The first one refers to the famous prince of Transylvania Vlad Tepes III, that "Vlad the Impaler" mentioned also in the title of the album, and reveals a beautiful sound structure, intriguing and full of metallic dissonances and little squeaks deep that unfolds over an harmonic low bearing of noise and very slightly darker carpet. Complete the experience wise some grafts of rhythmic effects that transforms the song into a involving and hypnotic drill-mantra which does not expect the end.
The second track titled 'To chain a dog up is very hard to describe. A plot sharper of saxophone samples and wind instruments, sounding vaguely experimental-jazz that come into a progression of increasing radio frequency placed each on the other. It 'a beautiful track, hypnotic and progressive. I like it very much, because it reminds many forms of 'industrial-psychedelia' of the early 90s we loved. His hearing has involved me into a small imaginary vision. In this piece I heard echoes of a lost transmission over a radio channel of the Nazi occupation in France. In a day of June during 1944. A channel was turned on a radio unit abandoned into a Nazi bunker full of steaming corpses of German soldiers incinerated by the flamethrower marines during the American D-Day in Normandy. Without a doubt, this 'To chain a dog up' the best track on this album. This track remains to turn whirling in mind even after its end. It has accompanied me pleasantly while listening the subsequent track 'Justice and decline' (featuring Urna and Gianluca Martucci) and also the last great track 'Return at the obscurity' (featurin Gianluca Becuzzi) which closes slowly and with dignity this work of Noisedelik. My overall assessment for this job of Noisedelik / Maximum Olla is therefore a more than good. But at the end of this long review, I think we should also say that his growth as an electronic musician, which greet with pleasure, I think is the result also of a musical environment that has grown in our country around him and with him, in these last times.
I speak of the music electronics and industrial scene, of which has come to create gradually in our city of Cagliari. This city is the elective urban location of our island of Sardinia placed in the center of the Mediterranean. But for the same fact of being the city of an island, in the middle of the sea, is also considered to be a real peripheral place too distant from many other places of artistic and musical scene surely best known in Italy or in Europe.
Yet, in our city away from it all, where it seems that nothing could happen is instead grown autonomously and independent a new electronic industrial music-scene that I believe it is an important thing.
My small tribute to this work of Noisedelik is therefore a small tribute to this city scene. A scene that is also represented by an annual festival of music and industrial culture as 'Solo il mio nero' (Only my black) (www.hierrunieddu.org) which has many free live concerts of electronic music and contamination in the grey-area. Scene that I know well since I attend personally for many years. I think it's just report it. How do I report Maximum Olla that in this scene, is a new entry, which adds excitement, lymph, energy and good ideas.
In fact Noisedelik, although being a neophyte into our grey-area, is an active person that drives a forum on Facebook dedicated just to these sounds and called MUZIKA [P]ARTIGIANA. He does it with so many of our musician friends of Sardinia and Italy, many of they are such well-known names into the Italian electronic music-scene as Gianluca Becuzzi, Simon Balestrazzi or Corrado Altieri. MUZIKA [P]ARTIGIANA is a virtual space on Facebook that comes to life from a real music scene exists in Sardinia and, according to many musician friends, it is also one of the few existing places on the net and in Italy that allow a sincere debate between producers , musicians, fans and lovers of electronic music and industrial. A virtual place that facilitates the real exchange and deepening of musical themes and concepts that characterize most of our cultural environment that is the gray-area and electronic music and industrial.
I speak with pleasure of MUZIKA [P]ARTIGIANA because it is the place on the net that deserves maximum respect and your full attention. And although I do personally and unfortunately not I attend because of my strong idiosyncrasy against Facebook and social networking in general. I invite all of you but to do it in my place. I think you will find it perhaps one of the few valid reasons for those of us still use this shit of Facebook.

ITALIAN

Ho appena ascoltato la copia numerata 1 di 50 di 'VLAD ' Looks to Europe in flames' , il secondo lavoro di Noisedelik il progetto dell'amico Massimo Olla di Cagliari.
E' un CDR autoprodotto, per la sua NDK Recordz, che pero' si presenta con una pregevole estetica e un packaging molto raffinato e molto superiore a quelli di certe label ben piu' blasonate. E devo dire che, fin dal primo ascolto, questo disco mi ha piacevolmente stupito per le sue sonorita' .
Vivendo nella stessa citta' conosco l'autore da diverso tempo e lo scorso anno ho ascoltato il suo disco d'esordio, dal titolo 'Le 9 Ossessioni'.
Consideravo questo suo lavoro precedente, un disco molto acerbo, quasi giovanile, nonostante l'autore abbia oltre quarantanni. Disco frutto di sincera passione ma che scontava l'entusiasmo iniziale con tutte le ingenuita' proprie del recente innamoramento per le sonorità industrial. Massimo proviene infatti da trascorsi rock e si e' avvicinato solo di recente alla produzione sonora in prima persona di suoni e rumori dalla riconoscibile matrice industrial.
Questo disco invece, a mio giudizio e a differenza del precedente, rappresenta non solo una forte crescita personale dell'autore, ma un importante lavoro frutto di una evidente maggiore tecnica compositiva e soprattutto di una forte consapevolezza. Cosa che sarebbe stata difficile da ottenere, per alcuni musicisti, senza compiere un percorso di molti anni. Massimo Olla, questo percorso personale di crescita e maturazione sonora, in un ambito di produzione e ascolto difficile e di nicchia come l'industrial, e' riuscito a compierlo in soli due anni. Credo meriti, solo per questo motivo, il nostro massimo rispetto.
Entro piu' in dettaglio su questo disco per dirvi che, fatta eccezione per alcuni piccolissimi drop in alcuni punti, che sono forse frutto involontario della masterizzazione casalinga del cdr, questo disco ha un suono davvero molto professionale segno di un buonissimo mastering. Noisedelik umilmente mi ha rivelato che nel disco la parte tecnica non e' solo sua ma e' frutto anche del lavoro di un musicista italiano importante come Gianluca Becuzzi che collabora con Massimo musicalmente pure nell'ultimo brano del disco. Un amico suo e anche nostro. Becuzzi e' un musicista italiano molto noto e non ha certo bisogno di troppe presentazioni. Il suo lavoro di mastering, in questo disco, fa la differenza. Ma diversi altri amici e musicisti hanno collaborato in queste tracce. Sono: Dalila Kayros, Svart1, Urna, Gianluca Martucci.
Venendo invece alla composizione sonora le prime 2 tracce, 'The problem defeat me' e 'Narcisism ambient' aprono il lavoro generosamente predisponendo l'ascoltatore all'ascolto del corpo centrale del disco. Sono due pezzi elettroacustici, molto ambientali e particolarmente indicati come intro.
La gran parte delle sonorita' presenti nel disco, mantengono questa impronta elettroacustica, che si sviluppa insieme ad un forte uso di drones e di crescendo di suoni campionati diversi. Le strutture sonore dei diversi brani hanno sempre livelli sovrapposti e un tessuto molto intrigante. I suoni ambientali si alternano a episodi ritmici particolari che non sono mai fuori luogo o dissonanti. Anche quando i loop di alcuni drums sono, forse volutamente, fuori-taglio, come avviene nel bel brano intitolato Ancestral Kebab (con Svart1) diventano una nota dinamica ulteriore e piacevolmente storta.

Il terzo brano intitolato 'Cenere e Menzogna' (con Dalila Kayros) e' l'unico che ha una presenza vocale importante e anche un testo in italiano. Non e' una vera e propria song, perche' la voce e' distorta e filtrata nel corso di una sorta di esercizio di "spoken-word". Questo uso di lettura e voce comunque, a mio modesto parere, è abbastanza banale e mal si concilia con il resto dei suoni che creano una trama molto interessante. Questa traccia, per questo motivo, risulta l'episodio meno riuscito di tutto il lavoro.
Eccetto questa meno riuscita tutte le altre tracce mantengono invece inalterato e abbastanza alto il livello di attrazione di questo disco. Segnalo in particolare le due tracce centrali: "The Vlad Suspicion" e "To chain a dog up". La prima delle due richiama il noto Vlad Tepes III, quel 'Vlad l'Impalatore' che da' il titolo all'intero album. La traccia presenta una bella struttura intrigante e ricca di dissonanze metalliche e cigolii profondi che si dipanano su un'armonica portante bassa, leggermente noise e molto cupa. Completano il tutto sapienti innesti di ritmica ad effetto che trasformano il brano in un ipnotico trapano-mantra di cui non si attende la fine.
La seconda traccia centrale intitolata "To chain a dog up" e' molto difficile da descrivere. Una trama nitida di campioni di sax e strumenti a fiato, vagamente sperimental-jazz che entrano in progressione su un crescendo di frequenze radio sovrapposte. E' una bella traccia ipnotica e progressiva. Che mi piace molto, perche' ricorda molte forme di psichedelia industriale dei primi anni '90 che abbiamo amato... Il suo ascolto mi ha fatto anche immaginare una piccola visione. In questo brano ho sentito gli echi di una "lost transmission" su un canale radio dell'occupazione nazista in Francia. In una sera di giugno del 1944. Ho sentito un canale radio morto e l'ho visto pulsare sui meter di una centralina rimasta accesa all'interno di un bunker nazista fumante e ricolmo di cadaveri di soldati tedeschi inceneriti dai lanciafiamme dei marines durante lo sbarco americano in Normandia. Senza ombra di dubbio, a mio avviso, questo brano "To chain a dog up" rappresenta di gran lunga il miglior pezzo dell'album. Una traccia che rimane a girare vorticosa in mente anche dopo la sua fine. E che ha accompagnato piacevolmente anche durante l'ascolto delle successive tracce, la bella "Justice and decline" (con Urna e Gianluca Martucci) e l'ottima "The return at the obscurity" (con Gianluca Becuzzi) con cui si chiude lentamente e degnamente il lavoro di Noisedelik.
Il mio e' dunque un giudizio complessivo piu' che buono per questo lavoro di Noisedelik/Massimo Olla. Ma in chiusura di questa lunga recensione, credo si debba anche dire che questa sua crescita, come musicista, che salutiamo con piacere penso sia frutto anche di un ambiente musicale che, secondo me, e' cresciuto intorno a lui e insieme a lui in questi ultimi tempi.
Parlo della scena musicale, elettronica e industriale che si e' venuta a creare progressivamente nella nostra citta' di Cagliari. Che e' luogo urbano per eccellenza della nostra isola di Sardegna al centro del Mediterraneo . E per il fatto di essere la citta' di un'isola in mezzo al mare e' anche considerata un luogo periferico e distante da molti altri luoghi musicali e artistici sicuramente piu' noti in Italia o in Europa. Eppure, in questa nostra citta' lontana da tutto, dove sembra che niente potrebbe accadere e' invece cresciuta in modo autonomo e indipendente una scena elettronica e industrial che credo rappresenti una cosa importante. Una scena che e' viva e ben rappresentata anche da un festival annuale di musica e cultura industriale come 'Solo il mio nero' (www.hierrunieddu.org) che presenta molti concerti dal vivo di musica elettronica e contaminazioni nella grey-area. Il mio piccolo tributo al disco di Noisedelik e' quindi un piccolo omaggio anche a questa scena cittadina. Scena che conosco bene dato che la frequento personalmente da molti anni. Credo sia giusto segnalarla. Come segnalo Massimo Olla che in questa scena, rappresenta un nuovo ingresso, che aggiunge entusiasmo, linfa, dinamismo e ottime idee. Aggiungo anche che Noisedelik, pur essendo un neofita nella nostra grey-area, e' una persona che anima attivamente un bel forum su Facebook dedicato proprio a queste sonorita' e chiamato MUZIKA[P]ARTIGIANA. Lo fa insieme a tanti nostri amici musicisti sardi e non, come ad esempio nomi molto noti del panorama elettronico italiano del calibro di Gianluca Becuzzi, Simon Balestrazzi o Corrado Altieri.
MUZIKA[P]ARTIGIANA e' uno spazio virtuale che prende vita a partire da una scena musicale reale esistente in Sardegna e, a detta di molti amici musicisti, e' anche uno dei pochi luoghi esistenti sulla rete e in Italia che permettano un confronto sincero tra produttori, musicisti, appassionati e cultori di musica elettronica e industrial. Un luogo virtuale che favorisce lo scambio reale e l'approfondimento delle tematiche musicali e concettuali che contraddistinguono meglio il nostro ambito culturale che e' quello della Grey -area e della musica elettronica e industrial.
Parlo con piacere di MUZIKA[P]ARTIGIANA perche' e' un luogo sulla rete che merita massimo rispetto e tutta la vostra attenzione. E lo faccio nonostante, personalmente e purtroppo, non lo frequenti a causa della mia forte idiosincrasia nei confronti di Facebook in generale. Invito percio' tutti voi a farlo, anche al mio posto. Penso che se vi trovate su Facebook lo dovreste ricercare e iscrivervi perche' lo troverete forse uno dei pochi motivi ancora validi, per quelli come noi, per usare ancora quella merda di social network.

This island where I live never ceases to amaze me for the richness and creativity of its musical offerings. Especially into our scene of industrial and electronic music, which usually is thought to be restricted and much less busy than other musical genres. What I present is in fact another excellent production of Trasponsonic Records (http://www.trasponsonic.net) a small and interesting independent Italian (and Sardinian) label which turns out to be a source of unexpected little gems of sound. Trasponsonic is little, but very active. The label is founded by our friend and musician Mirko Santoru, that keeps it well hidden into his shelter based in Macomer (a small town in the internal territory of our Sardinia). But sometimes, from this "buen retiro", Mirko with Trasponsonic and his band of musicians seem suddenly exploding, in the silence of the countryside around, all the crash of masterpieces like this album which is titled "Il deserto e le fabbriche' (in english: the desert and factories). This new work is signed by the collective sound project called HBOL (acronym of Hermetic Brotherhood Of Lux-Or) involving different musicians and performers (in this record appears the names of Campostorto, Miroslaw, Varrs, Tonj). The work is also the second chapter of an interesting anthology entitled "Ethnographies - Musee de l'Homme Hermetique'.

We'll tell you immediately what I think. This double cd "Il deserto e le fabbriche", the first time I've listen it, surprise me like 'a couple of punches in the nose when the guard is low...!' Because all of its tracks have real musically force inside, have roughness and hardness, sound tribal and industrial at the same time. Are not surely easy to listening. But also are not easy to forget. And this strange feeling 'after listening' left me by the sounds and the noises of Hermetic Brotherhood Of Lux-Or is a really positive sensation was actually difficult to find, for me, even into the works of many groups of gray-area are surely most famous and popular of them. This disc breaks the nasal septum. And we bleed for its sounds but also for the important substance that contains, really conceptual and dense. The two CDs are in fact marked by a boundary line that is well described in the cover notes. The first disc is cryptically subtitled as "Jesus And John Wayne" and i read into that, and I seem to hear, all the red hot sounds of the desert and together all the sand in the eyes during a long ride through the American wild west. This sand in the eyes, for us, is the same Grand Canyon's red earth to get dirty and covered everything. Wagons, horses, cowboys and Indians. That sand was also a mirage and a dream, for us Italians. The sand of the myth of the great wild frontier, as seen through the innocent eyes of our little Italy. A distant mediterranean's country that was fed for a long time with the utopic imaginary by '60s western movies or with the fake and simple optimism of that classic 'american way of life' ever in black and white.

The second disc, entitled equally cryptic "... and Justice for Hollywood" takes us back to a different imaginary. A sub-urban and actual imaginary compound from other deserts of metal and dust. The urban deserts of much industrial archeology close to our cities. The inert metal of abandoned and disused factories and assembly lines broken. The place of human labor that have been broken by the unbridled capitalism that destroys men during its run, destroys cultures and ideas, leaving only rubble behind. Another imaginary, probably common to many provinces of the Western empire. Imagery that is common in this Sardinia Italy, and this affected by industrial decline like some poor distant provinces of the country which was certainly the most heavily industrialized long ago. The other conceptual element that characterizes all the works published by Trasponsonic is, in my opinion, its search for a new road. A road which is sound but it is also philosophical, to a neo-pagan mystical and anthropomorphic, combined with the primitive tribalism. Concepts that reinforce with the use of the raw material of the primordial elements, in a mixture of men and earth, water, air and fire. United by sound and noise.

Perhaps these aspects of his philosophy more intimate would be enough to urge you to look and buy this gem, which you can order directly online at Trasponsonic that sells and distributes on its web site all its work. But if philosophy is not enough you know that the sounds that come from this research are certainly no less profound. The two discs have a feeling old, long ago, but vital, modern and close to us. Almost hear them breathing and panting beside us. All the tracks seem filled with a sound that is tribal and violent. Sound that is material but also dreamy and distant. Sound hard and blood, near and maternal at the same time. This sound is a alien mantis, made of flesh and metal, which feeds on your blood and surrounds you giving you his warm milk.

Even the best trained ears to the post-industrial sound could be damaged hearing songs like "Hyperion Sunset" or "Gravity Sucks" contained in the first cd "Jesus And John Wayne" that could be called a disturbing and dark 'avant-psychedelic rock'. But you'll easily attracted by things that remind us that the best Current 93 chant mantras and eastern litanies with other sounds and atmospheres worthy of the best 'spaghetti westerns' with a soundtrack by Morricone.
If you open the second cd and listen to songs like "Violet Pride" and "Red Rage" will find stunning examples of epic tribal and industrial noise. But I doubt any free resist coming to the end of the last half hour of apotheosis song called "Yellow Avaritia". Because there are tracks in this record that sound like the Laibach, the Trobbing Gristle, and the Zero Kama with the Kranioklast had gathered, all together, inside a deep cave to play steel pipes and human hollow bones. And I must also tell you that the Hermetic Brotherhood of Lux-Or the sound really hollow bones! I saw them live in a M.S. Miroslav, and struck a magnificent skull of horse he assembled and electronically modified with effects and pick-ups to transform it into a modern electro-noise amplifier instrument.

I will stop here. And I want to use. to close this review, the words of Julian Cope, the well-known musician, who arrived here in Sardinia thanks to his passion for archeology of prehistoric megalithic that our land is rich. Cope has discovered the charm and sonority of the work of Trasponsonic and he on his website defines this disc enthusiastically in this way: ... a severe form of Kosmische Musik.... utter vocaleptic brainstorms, eternal drumclatter, caveholler, lo-lo-fi Neu 2-style thrash, epic sub-Faust mung worship and seething half-hour-long Zoroastrian ambulence of the dark stasis variety...

SVART1 is the pseudonym of Raimondo Gaviano, an Italian musician who lives and works in Sardinia. The title of his latest work that I present today is Praha.
Svart1 is a representative member of best music scene into this big island of Sardinia, located at the center of Mediterranean Sea, which has especially into experimental grey-area and around the electronic music, some known musicians and also many followers and fans.
This last work of Svart1, titled Praha, is a limited edition CD produced by a non-Italian label, the Mrtvaja Records, a small and independent Bosnian label, born in 2009. The Mrtvaja label produces really fine limited editions of works of experimental electronic and electro-acoustic music. Svart1, in this case, works for Mrtvaja Records but hi has realized various productions for others independent labels and also more self-realised productions. All the discograpy is visible on his personal website. Svart1 during his career have also many collaborations with other artists of the Italian and European electronic scene.
Gaviano, as I said earlier, working in Sardinia like many other electronic musicians his countrymen and also for this reason is really used to have a necessary great productive autonomy and often also move beyond the narrow confines of this island to interweave many contacts and collaborations with others musicians who working overseas.

This work Praha is an example of this easy "way of life" to migrate overseas for Sardinian artists. Praha contains a recent live of Svart1 recording in Prague (at the Cafe V Lese during March 2012 for an event organized by Arkham Productions (http://www.arkham.hys.cz/).
The Arkham is one of the most renowned cultural promotion agencies of that city and, on the same occasion, also the Czeck artists of the Seismic Wave Factory performed a live with the VJ's of the Fuck TV project (you can found some infos about those projects on http://www.industrialgallery.com).

This album Praha is a very good work for me. And his tracks are a perfect testimony of the genuine and sincere approach to the electronic music of our Svart1. A careful listening to this record reveals very positive for the mind as a persuasive mantra, at times more hypnotic, familiar and comfortable for discerning ears as a carpet of self-constructed rhythms that are never predictable or consistent.
For example, into the opening track, an audio sample of a simple running sewing machine turns into a cyclic pre-apocalyptic drone portends an impending flood. And all the work is a successful and enjoyable example of the best minimal noise with grafts of electronic ambient that are always expertly blended to work together without any mannerism.

A great job so this Praha, which I recommend, however, to hear before a random search on Youtube videos work by Svart1/Raimondo. Because the artistic research of Raymond Gaviano is never just or only music. And for this reason surely a single CD audio is not able to give a full idea of his works. For those, like me, who knows and follows it from many years it is difficult to separate these two aspects of sound and video image which, in this case, are always intimately linked.
The self-produced video by Raimondo Gaviano, run behind him during his live performances and are little masterpieces. Each concert, for the spectator, is indeed a beautiful multi-sensorial experience that is based on the close union between music and the video processing of extreme or dreamlike images that emphasize and amplify fueling our imagination in a growing fact of endless cinematographic references and citations.

Finally i recommend also you to not stop only at this album Praha, last work of Svart1/Raimondo Gaviano, because I hope, after this review, please you to go on the net, for a search around his other works.
Because Svart1 is a complete artist. A good electronic musician but also a great video maker and a fantastic manipulator of digital images. The post-industrial atmospheres that his work created for us, by masterly use of a thin, black and white very dry, or with a color change into a soft focus often dissolving in a strong light and dark, thwarted and diverted, are the best description possible of the ruined worlds that surrounds us and surrounding our post-industrial way of feeling this strange modern life. You have to see the work of Svart1 not just listen.

This russian label Monochrome Vision (www.monochromevision.ru) represent for me a beautiful reality into the independent musical scene of Eastern Europe. This scene is becoming during those years more interesting and rich. The Monochrome Vision offer a number of interesting works. I invite you to visit his web site where, in addition to a catalog, you will find a very nice interface that stands out, among many different labels of the electronic/gray area, for it rigorous and geometrical graphic approach, full of shiny white color and total black.

This kind of black & white "esplendor geometric " becomes also a graphic choice even revived on the covers of his albums. And I imagine also this choice want to emphasize the care and rigor of the label into his selection of their authors and materials. So I would talk to you today just one of those works produced by the strict Monochrome Vision. An album that is titled "Mantis Fog Desert" and is signed by the double name PBK & Zanstones.

I must confess that before listening to this album, I enjoyed the presentation in the notes written inside the cover where one of the two authors describe the other as an insomniac because of his need to experiment and continuously produce electronic music. For this reason I went around the web to learn more. And I saw that PBK stands for Phillip B. Klinger and Zanstones is one of the many pseudonyms of an old acquaintance of electronic experimentation, which is called Zan Hoffman.

Of PBK/Phillip Klinger and his works , unfortunately, I have not any direct knowledge. So I prefer to trust the words of Don Campau published on his "Living Archive of Electronic Music" (http://livingarchive.doncampau.com). Is an interesting website which I highly recommend especially to all those of you who loves the roughness and the analog low-fi music of "cassette-culture" and the experimental manipulation based on audio tapes. Into his Living Archive website Campau (who is surely an expert) describes for us, in excited way, the musician Phillip B. Klinger and also which tells of his sound experimentation as the fruit of long experience in fact started in the mid 80's. So I think we can trust to PBK. I report here for you, in a few lines, a little part of that presentation:

< ... I always admired , respected and enjoyed the work I had heard by PBK over the years. For the first few years I didn't even know his real name although it was embedded, but shrouded in his releases. To me there was a type of mystery in what he did because the sounds were so far out, alien like and strange. However, Phillip B. Klinger is not only an intelligent, articulate and eloquent spokesman for his art but is inclusive and a genuinely nice and engaging fellow. He has also made some of the most outstanding and creative work in the experimental, home recording field...>

In addition to the words of Campau then add the fact that, together with a musician like Phillip B. Klinger joins, into this album Mantis Desert Fog which I am presenting, another important name as Zan Hoffman/ Zanstones, who is not only a good electronic musician, but is also the founder of the label ZH27 (http://zh27.blogspot.it).
If you've never heard of ZH27, even in this case I think it is enough to visit the web area contains the catalog of this label and many works of Zan Hoffman, to get an idea of who I'm talking about. You'll find that the production of audio ZH27 and Zan Hoffman is nothing short of immense and continues without interruption for over 25 years.

It's hundreds and hundreds of albums. I thought that the union of these two authors, on the same musical work, was so sure index of quality music. And after listening to me has fully confirmed the initial supposition. Mantis Fog Desert proved to be fact, since first hearing, a long and beautiful series of 8 musical suites, consisting of a successful amalgam of electronic and noise, perfectly mixed and enjoyed listening to both, some peoples devotee of this musical genre or any neophyte that attracted for the first time from this type of sound.

This album, after repeated and careful listening, reveals a hot core of instinctive conceptual substance enclosed in a casing that is its musical form more aesthetic and technologically sophisticated. The album have 8 tracks. Half of these tracks is to last more than 8 minutes each. And the other half has a duration on average about 5 minutes. But only first 5 track are realized by all two musicians.
Into the next 2 track Zanstones works alone (titled are 'The Jor Bangla Effect' and 'Disentangling Bilot Kaf'), and also PBK plays alone into the last very long track (over 10 minutes) titled 'Paranoia Corridor'.

Their instinctive but concrete musical concept of working realize a sort of small, intense symphony for electronic and musical waves and noise, condensed into these 8 tracks. And it's amazing how, who can play either solo or in pairs, they create a dense sound and very intense. A sound with a great aesthetic appeal but also imbued with an air of conceptual and strange psychedelic substance intended for inner reflection. In this record there are no short tracks or fast rhythm, but only long musical carpets where every sound listening requires to find the correct time for a proper breath. All tracks are beautiful and elaborate, and build a labyrinth of sound around the listener. Labyrinth into which entry is easy but the output is difficult to find.

Each of these track reveal in fact a prelude sound and a sinuous development, with no clear conclusion, in the most positive sense of the term. Nothing is permanently closed into the infinite pathway of music by this strange and alien 'Mantis' who wanders through the mists of the desert. Nothing is developed to an end and nothing is locked between a beginning and another ending that are signs for a set a definitive cycle. On this journey through the desert, which is musical and conceptual, each cycle repeated and becomes theoretically infinite. They are cycles of day and night, light and dark, black and white.

Each piece of Mantis Fog Desert is thus resulting in a loop, and one being related. Loop for himself and about himself but also with the song that precedes and follows it. This disc may be the first chapter of a suite that becomes infinite. And you could become its slaves from the first listen. Because it is easy to get pleasantly lost in the dawn mists of this desert in the pitch dark religious listening of this mantis. Even happened to me to hear this record, several times in succession without having decided. It happened to me last night, while surfing the net and writing, for Chain DLK, this review.

It's been like if I lose on the way, listening to this album and thanks its sounds intriguing and fascinating, in a night journey made light of dawn blue leds in my monitor whit the many colors of the net. And I'm unaware of the lapse of several hours. When I stopped listening to this work was done daily. And the fog, with many mists of the dark night are gone. But the taste of dawn remained, as happens after any nice journey through the night.

I wish you a pleasant journey to you and I recommend listening to this Mantis Fog Desert. Enjoy your trip through the mists of night in the desert. I'm sure, the good electronic music of PBK & Zanstones that will accompany you until the next sunrise.

The independent russian label 'Alone at Last' despite its name certainly does not leave us alone. This label announced his birth until march of this year and has already released three excellent works simultaneously. One of these discs are the "Celtichants" by Maurizio Bianchi. I have already talked about here on Chain DLK.
And I also said about the painstaking care with which, our friend Dimitry (the eclectic producer of Alone At Last) realizes his records. A treatment that makes all limited edition copies as little gems contained into a package similar to an origami paper, with color and graphics intriguing and different.

The content of this review is one of this origami work, produced by a duo of great New-Zealand's noise- musicians. One of them is certainly more well known also here in Italy, a country from which I write. It is the volcanic Bruce Russell. And i hope most of you remember him thanks to its "free-noise manifesto".
Bruce is also the musician who has created (with Michael Morley) a very important band like the DEAD C (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_C). The Dead C is considered by many people to be a real cult formation that invented the 'New Zealand-Noise'.
Bruce Russell in the eighties, also founded an independent label named 'XpressWay Records' (the one that produced works of other noise artists such as Dadamah, Pin Group and Terminals) and after XpressWay experience Bruce created also another label, the Corpus Hermeticum, which published the works of his most recent project "A Handful Of Dust" (with the violinist Alastair Galbraith). For all of those reasons I think Bruce Russel is certainly a big name in the noise musical scene.

The other musician who played with Bruce in this "Garage Music" is Richard Francis. (http://www.richardfrancis.net.nz/ )
I don't know Richard before this work, but i've found many materials on the web and about it. And i think it is another interesting musician with different important works and many collaborations between New Zealand and Japan, also thanks to his project called Eso Steel. And here, into this work with Bruce, Richard proves certainly lives up to comparisons with the another great noise-designer.

We come finally to talk about this record of our two "noisers". It is a disc which contains 3 short tracks about 5 minutes each entitled at the same mode: Garage 1, 2 and 3. And contain also two beautiful and long suites of sound, of 13 and 17 minutes.
The resulting product is a big example of industrial minimalism and noise ambient based on drones, with analog sounds, guitars and other synthesis music. But I want to tell about this work not only for the beautiful substance of his sound but also for the very particular form in which it was created and registered.

The two musicians have in fact cooperated at a distance. Initially only by exchanging mail, one with each other, between 2007 and 2009. In this way recorded all traces of guitar, played by Bruce, and synthesizers and computers, manipulated by Richard and finally assembly into these 3 short tracks i talk before, with the same title "Garage" . But also the two long suites are the result of a different and strange mix of live recordings in part sincronous and part a-sincronous.

One of those two long suites is titled "Undead" and is a strange marriage between two different recordings of a solo-set performed by authors. The gigs are recorded separately but are performed on the same day.
The resulting fusion is really intense and highly processed.
This long track is titled "Undead" and is certainly the best piece of the whole work. A carpet of sound industrial smoke and whirring motors that rotate and beat synchronously in-phase or anti-phase. Also in this track sound manipulation and real-time computer and synthesizers owned by Richard and cords and ribbons clavioline played by Bruce, create a dough environmental dense and liquid from which it emerges hypnotic listening to fatigue. Really a great job.

For me Undead is very beautiful, alienating and also personally upsetting for the kind of ambient noise-that in some instances is created. With drones sounds and cyclic sinusoidal rhythms. All of these drones going to overlap, defeating and counter-beating, to meet at the end, even if quite by chance, on the same rhythmic pulse.

The fifth and last track of this album, also long, is titled simply "Live" and was recording during a live real-time concert. This concert happens in February 2009 and in the same place as other live tracks. And finally he sees, for the first time in this work, the two musicians play together your noise and industrial music. Live is a great final noise gig for all of us. To leave us "Not alone at last..!"

I close here my review. But I will tell you that, even if our Bruce and Richard are surely accustomed to frequent the lands and seas far away from our Europe, as I listened to their record I imagined the ideal backdrop to their live set with sounds of this type.
I hope these two noise-surfers will forgive me if I don't imagine them lying on the sands under their New-Zealand's sun but I see them play their industrial musics in a nocturnal gig set, amid the ruins of a factory and near the cold seas of north Europe. I imagine also, behind them and their musics, only the dark blue color of sky and the grey of clouds moving slowly over the Finns seawaves.