Reviews

R.U.N.I. - La Zuccha Polmonate (Wallace)
A year and a half have passed since the debut effort "Il Cucchiaio Infernale" and R.U.N.I. just can make doing nothing at all. It has been a successful choice in you readers' perspective since - as to fun - last japanese-korean Football World Cup edition's miniature-billiards-like technical standards (don't worry: thanks to a sudden attack by FIFA, 2006's edition won't take place in Germany but… in Ecuador !).
Better getting back to music. After congratulating with certain Elvisio for this remix album's cover and title (need a brain check soon !!), let's push play button. Open R.U.N.I. themselves with a remix of 'Clinicocchio' (here titled 'Clinigrillo'), not very guessed, I would say, both for its endless intro and for its too much nervous-breakdown-like cut ups (for whom listening to them). Avoiding the remark about the intro, I could spell the same words for 'Agro Technosiciliano Ulteriore' (remix of 'Il Technosiciliano') for the likes of Pin Pin Sugar. In both cases, album version are better than remixes. From 'Fun Kon Frenk' (signed by Wallace's mastermind Mirko Spino) onwards a proper remake - more than a remix - of the studio album starts. By means of analog noisy splinters and a bass tar-like groove, dear Mirko, starting from the original 'Let No Frank', builds an absolutely dance-hall-ground-breaking track.
Maybe the proper hit of this record. Then Bugo takes the duty of keeping your body temperature's level high by 'Buttare le Bottiglie, Tenere il Rischio', still more raving remix version of the original 'Le Bottiglie di Prastica' (never got why 'prastica' instead of 'plastica'). Freshman in the major world, Bugo farewells his Wallace mates with a superb early-Beck-worthy sample-noise-rap effort, involving 'Voodoo Chile''s opening riff and a summer meteor of ten or so years ago ('I Can't Stand It No More, And No No More' - goddamn, whose song was this ?!) in his wild sampling. Whereas I would have expected A Short Apnea to do something more than screamed noise (wouldn't those horrible vocals be by some of Allun's ?!) featured in 'Il Mento è a Rischio (Ed Io Me Ne Infischio)', second-rate sonic alter-ego for 'Il Tempo è Disco (e Io Non Lo Capisco)'. Following are 10 minutes of valuable hard-electro trance by A034 (some time ago slashed by myself) with 'Resti Umani Azerotrentaquattrificati'.
Deep in Rollerball's style is 'Vellutati Marroni' by… Rollerball, exactly, as well as Mutable from Snowdonia drench the following 'Pediluvio Universale' (gonna call the brain-squeezer next !!) in their crafty border-like lounge-pop. Then it's Tasaday's turn to make the album's level rise again. 'Monstri Gamordi' becomes 'Pig Party' in their hands, that is to say a threatening cluod charged with thunderbolts and noise. In approaching the album's end we meet again the wastrel mood of the album's first tracks (so as this album is meant by the authors). Aerodynamics' 'AeR.U.N.I.mics (Fantaremix)' is a cheeky sample of Berliner minimal-techno, while, in 'Infernale Remix', oVo chew up and centrifuge more than a song from "Cucchiaio Infernale" by means of their assault-like free-noise. Did you have enough, I guess. Bob Villani

Boom Bip & Doseone - Circle (Leaf)
"Boom Bip: an acrobat of the turntable having stamped his card at the most valuable events and radio shows - musical producer not to be considered less calibred than Dust Brothers - his signature on the "Doo Doo" DJ-tool series - musicians with albums released via Mush and Lex Records (subsidiary of Warp Records)".
Slide # 2. "Doseone: prose harshness and chaos theory light-speededly and/or slow-motionedly applied to Mcing - driving force behind Themselves, Deep Puddle Dynamics, Greenthink, and cLOUDDEAD - reality painter by means of childish imagination". Slide # 3. "Circle: originally released in 2000 via Mush Records in North America - re-released today via Leaf Label in the rest of the world - 29 tracks - 70 minute lasting - mutant and android hip hop - DNA analysis: breakbeat, jazz, psichedelia, afro, spoken word, sampling, strumentazione live, Frank Zappa, Marx Brothers, Kool Keith, Boom Bip, Doseone, unknown - play dynamics, acidity, tight metrics, bantering jokes - supposed absence of relationships with dominant hip hop aesthetical codes - further analysis needed - top secret".
Cold fictitiously visual report on a really existing musical specimen. The rest can be discovered and experienced just directly by you. Buy this record. Soon and absolutely. Roberto Villani

Discolor - III (Mizmaze)
First time I came along Mizamze was few months ago, on the occasion of their co-production with Snowdonia of texan band Ohm's "Raw Ohm". This time the newcomer - no more than 10 releases yet - Milan-based label stands out alone (at least I guess, more unknown Treviso-based Lizard's brand appears on the back-cover… uh ?), and this time too producing a band from abroad. Did I say band ?
It's more or less so. Apart from other ones' marginal contributions, Discolor seems to merely consist of the persona of Stefan Lienemann, aka Limo, multi-instrumentalist from Nurnberg (Germany). Having benn standing out for nearly 15 years featuring several projects (Shiny Gnomes, Fit & Limo, Fim Froil), Limo seems to have always smartly devoted himself to a genre that has never gained lots of proselytes, I mean that 60s retro-modernist space psychedelia (something like Florence-based S.H.A.D.O. Records' releases… yeah, you needn't say, they're not so easily to find, scarcely I've got a record of that label).
Sort of low-volumed, soft-toned psychedelia, a spaceship slowly cutting through cosmic voids, far different from Motorpsycho or Phish's more-than-the-whole-like suites (neither acrobatics nor rough accelerations), focused both on guitar fuzz and feedbacks and on carpets made of vintage keyboards, bass and, in this case, sitar and micromoog. The album goes straight well in its first half, even thanks to the filtered vocals by Lotsi Lapislazuli (1000 to 1 that's his real name).
Made exception for 'And Wonder''s 12 minutes, the tunes are short-lasting yet hypnotic and fascinating excursions through near constellations. In the latter part of the record Limo unplugs his instruments and stretches (if not thins out) the sound, launching himself towards long-lasting psycho-acoustic suites (if not proper ballads). Some too prolonged drone makes us suspicious about Limo showing signs of wear and tear. Yet, lights and neighbour's TVs turned off you can get some good feel…
Bob Villani

Mary Timony - The Golden Dove (Matador)
In the beginning there were Autoclave, an obscure creature from Dischord's roster. Then it was Helium's turn, kind of more consistent thing as to notoriety. I know just one song of theirs, listened to in an old Matador label compilation.
I don't remember the title, but it didn't have anything of what I had already listened: ultra-lopsided melodies, 6 in the morning-awakening choirs. And her velvet vocals, Mary Timony. Come with "The Golden Where" to her sophomore solo album, Mary could easily and hurrily associated to the by now crowded troops of stars and striped folk-singers with license to rock (you already know their names: Liz Phair, Cat Power, Shannon Wright and the outsider Ani DiFranco, who - and ity's something she has wanted, and deserved - you never know where to put).
Mary has no doubt preserved a bit of the necessary inheritance of Helium (disbanded since a while), and you can realize it by her unlost attitude to pierce through our attention every now and then with a sharper guitar sound than that of her "peers", a sound put to the service of melodies overcoming vocals-guitar classical binomial standards. To let every "confrontational" approach go, it's worth remarking her cleverness (even if helped in this album by psychedelic countrymen Sparklehorse frontman Mark Linkous, here taking both guest musician and producer's duties) in making converge, under one stylistic connotation, both 60s psych-folk and kind of spirit-possessed electric guitar riffs.
Not to mention some piano and viola liricism. In a perfect shape, nothing to say, it's worth betting on her for the next match (oops! next album…)
Bob Villani

Silkworm - Italian Platinum (12XU)
Chris Brokaw - Red Cities (12XU)
12XU Records is a new creature that, taking its name from the historic song by Wire, is but "half" an old pal, being managed by Gerard Cosloy, sharing with Chris Lombardi Matador's "head coach bench". Carried out the due foreword, let's examine the music.
Not a couple of newcomers those who are going to talk about. Silkworm have been around for a dozen of years and already 8 albums on their shoulders.
Nevertheless Cohen, Midgett and Dahlquist, a classic rock three-piece, represent a new listening for me. So it's impossible to make any comparison with the past (goddamn!!), yet it's not hard after all to understand, in their case, they have achieved kind of a stylistic maturity. Ok, sooner or later everybody blows on 30 candle placed upon a cake, neither you can play punk rock and such a great mess all life long. Yet Silkworm still try rto do it, in a marginal way. Then they slow down, up to make us imagine them on a stage, sure, but also, their legs covered by a plaid, on a rocking-chair. A resolute choice as to attitude lacks, as well as that reservoir of fame and such positive criticisms so to be able to afford kind of ubiquities as Yo La Tengo or, one more step on, Sonic Youth are. As a path which, however impervious, takes you always in the same, expected direction, Silkworm end up seeming not to know where to place themselves exactly, lacking of incisiveness and missing their career hit. Unless promotional rules and mechanisms are not so powerful as they say…
Many of you should already know of Chris Brokaw. The skinny guitar tunes that "sickened" the Thalia Zedek's tormented vocals in 90s indie legends answering to the 4 letters C-o-m-e were really his tunes. This as far as it concerns my personal memories, since Chris has been involved in a more or less stable way in not few other indie small institutions (Pullman, The New Year, Codeine). "Red Cities" is his solo debut, a signal sent to those who, worried, didn't have any more news of his. Needless to say a consistent part of his "inclination" towards what of fuzzed and dark lies within everyone of us hasn't gone lost through years passing by. Rather Chris, closed in this claustrophobic match of guitar and drums (of which he's the lonely, do-it-himself performer), probably succeeds, in these 14 "stabs"- among which the unexpected Bacharach's cover 'The Look of Love' -, in further better expressing his messed tangle of dreams, fears, horizons of life. Still among the best, Chris.
Roberto Villani

Jerica's - Edison's Last Machine (Native)
We have been waiting for 4 years for a recording confirmation by what was, at least for me, perhaps 1998's best italian surprise. "Two Ships" represented Catania's n-th but worthy act of devotion to a music, a scene (post-rock) well launched overseas, but, in Italy, still just taking off and looking for a worthy substitute for the stratospheric Uzeda, already flyed towards wider and more prestigious opportunities (U.S., Touch & Go, Steve Albini).
In such a centrifugal-like indie scene, day by day dissolving bands then to recreate new ones with the same components of the old ones (ever heard of Bellini?), in an uproar of side-projects and alter egos, 4 years is a loooong time. It's therefore permissible to expect from "Edison's Last Machine", also owing to the band's guest appearances for Blonde Redhead, Dirty Three and, of course, Uzeda, a substantial step ahead. And Jerica's, good for all (us and them), don't disappoint these expectations.
Their album in fact overcomes the simple research for new sonic geometries in order to face the hard challenge of the melody. Without forgetting that precious background made of accelerations, pauses, reiterations, crescendos and light variations however (a sample of this patrimony is the monumental title-track, 7 minutes of densely saturated post-Slint sound). A future like Uzeda? It is the least we can wish them. They deserve it.
Roberto Villani