Three Second Kiss: Everyday-Everyman (Wide Records, 1998)

Good ol' noise-rock, in the mid-Nineties style heralded by Steve Albini's Shellac. Which means sharp edges, raw and rattling guitar slashes, disassembled/reassembled grooves. In a word: math-rock.
Engineered by Chicago-punk veteran Iain Burgess (the man behind Big Black's "Atomizer"), "Everyday-Everyman" has a memorably corrosive sound: the guitars emit a rasping, wrecked jingle-jangle, the drums are dry and convulsive, and the bass is as metallic as rust, as thundering as a roar. Two opposites define the album: a psychotic obsession for hyper-cerebral intrication and aseptic structures, and a feeling of total clumsiness and lack of precision.
The compositions aren't that important after all: all they have to do is provide the sound a constant stream of harsh and contorted guitar riffs, uneven stop'n'go dynamics and metronomic bass patterns. They serve quite well for the purpose, and that's all about them.

Three Second Kiss are a guitar-bass-drums "power trio" from Bologna. They're among the most celebrated artists of the Italian math-rock scene, which is quite renown abroad. This is their second lp out of four, and it features the guest appearance on vocals of Uzeda's singer Giovanna Cacciola (for the very short track "Pipeline").

Tracklist:

1. Operation Dragon
2. Everyday-Everyman
3. Wolf
4. Pipeline
5. I Cried, You Didn't Listen!
6. Rope
7. The First Fire
8. Speak, It's So Dark

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Similar music on the blog:
Uzeda: Different Section Wires (Touch and Go, 1998)
Taras Bul'ba: Incisione (Wallace, 2005)

Bandabardò: Iniziali bì-bì (BMG Ricordi, 1998)

There's a whole musical universe linked to secondary school leftfield culture, the one acquainted with student strikes, keffiyeh and Che Guevara t-shirts. The sound - roughly a merger of Mano Negra's patchanka and Gang's combat-folk - is a mixture of ska, reggae, world&traditional music, gipsy fascinations, cantautori political involvement (though much more utopian than focused on class struggle) and slightly sugary poptimism.

Florentine band Bandabardò is easily the best of the lot. Their style is light and skippy, strictly acoustic and braced by excellent musical skills. The guitar ranges from gipsy swing to straight upbeat strumming, while the double-bass/drums combo is at ease both with jaunty and more relaxed rhythms.
But that would be nothing, if the songs weren't as galvanizing. "Hamelin Song", "Cuore a metà", "L'estate paziente", "Beppeanna" and many other have hyper-catchy melodies and refrains, which don't look cheap beside a cover of Lucio Battisti's "Una giornata uggiosa". The lead singer's voice is personal and persuading, and perfectly contributes with its timbre and multiple languages to the trampy allure that emanates from the lyrics.
These last are both a great point and a black mark in the matter of the music. They're usually very light and well-written - very far from the usual languid rhetoricism of the genre though absolutely in line with its off-the-shelf "One Hundred Years of Solitude" obsession. A couple of songs nevertheless ooze with a sex mania which frankly spoils most of the lyrical construction. Bandabardò's devoted public won't probably care about that anyhow, and will just consider the abundance of unnecessary explicit references a "very leftfield" way to celebrate passion without falling into mainstream lovesong clichés.

Tracklist:

1. Hamelin Song
2. Cuore a metà
3. Disegnata
4. Una giornata uggiosa
5. L'estate paziente
6. Mélo
7. Ubriaco canta amore
8. Beppeanna
9. Juste le temps
10. Lo sciopero del sole
11. Bandabardò live (Brigitte Bardot)
12. Il circo mangione
13. Ewa
14. Sans papiers (iniziali S.P.)
15. Stai calmo rocco
16. Quello che parlava alla luna

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Similar music on the blog:
Gang: Le radici e le ali (1991)
Mariposa: Pròffiti Now (2005)

Uzeda: Different Section Wires (Touch and Go, 1998)

"Different Section Wires" is a roaring math-rock album in the vein of Shellac, with scratchy noise-guitar joints, tail-swallowing basslines, thunderous odd-meter drum monotonies and querulous, tuneless vocalizing.
The music is minimal and detached, its structures are always kept on the forefront, but the stop&go dynamics and the vitriolic sound add a chaotic dimension to the rigid mechanics of the tracks. Its seems like a fiery, instinctive urge acts against mathematics and deconstructs its house of cards. This contrast between the entraped immobilty of formalism and chatartic impulsiveness is the key of Uzeda's implosive sound.

Uzeda are a band from Catania, Sicily. They were founded in 1987 and "Different Section Wires" is their fourth LP. It came out for the prestigious american label Touch and Go Records (Big Black, Shellac, Don Caballero, June of 44, Slint...) and was given very positive review from the international press. Two of Uzeda's member teamed up with Don Caballero's drummer Damon Che to form the band Bellini, which published the albums "Snowing Sun" and "Small Stones".
As of today, Uzeda are along Premiata Forneria Marconi the only Italian band to be hosted in B.B.C. studios to record a session with the celebrated John Peel.


Tracklist:

1. Nico and His Cats
2. Stomp
3. Steel Man
4. Suaviter
5. Ten Stars
6. The Milky Way
7. Female
8. Big Lies

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Musica per bambini: Nascondino coll'assassino (La mia cantina, 1998)

Musica per bambini are the two Italo-Australian twins Manuel and Tim Bongiorni. The roots of their interest in music for children can be traced back to the age of seven, when they debuted with "children" versions of synth-pop classics (Depeche Mode, Duran Duran).
After having relocated to Italy in the end of the Eighties, they began working on a higly idiosyncratic music/theatre show merging pre-recorded backing tracks, gashed nursery rhymes, effected vocals and home-made scenographies.

"Nascondino con l'assassino" is the project's first official release. It's a mini-album featuring just nine tracks. which will unavodably fail to satisfy the majority. Approximative, ostentatiously unkempt, the music couples sick pseudo-folksongs with unpolished electronic beats and punk-metal guitars. It may resemble to a terrorist, mentally ill version of Üstmamò.
Though initially quite disturbing, the record quickly reveals the lucid design of its aesthetics and the limpid levity of its melodies. A curiosity: "La pianta dei chiodi" has the same strophe of XTC's "Sacrifical Bonfire" - the two songs are probably based on the same traditional.


Tracklist:

1. Tana per l'assassino
2. Il bosco di biscotti
3. Morte di una bambola di carta
4. Il lanciatore di coltelli
5. La pianta dei chiodi
6. Morte di un cavallo a dondolo
7. Betoniera
8. Canto popolare dei sacchi di cemento
9. Morte di un orsetto di pelouche

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Max Gazzè: La favola di Adamo ed Eva (Virgin/EMI, 1998)

Max Gazzè's songwriting's very sprightly and tuneful, but his melodies are always elegant and askance. He has a velvety, high-pitched voice which makes impossible not to recognise his style. There are some excellent songs here: tender, airy... But the album's not very balanced and there are some weak tracks. It's not a good reason not to listen to it, though: these are the cases the "skip" button's really useful.


Tracklist:

1. La favola di Adamo ed Eva
2. Una musica può fare
3. Cara Valentina
4. Raduni Ovali
5. L'amore pensato
6. Nel verde
7. Comunque vada
8. Come si conviene (Bon pà)
9. L'origine del mondo
10. Vento d'estate
11. Autoironia
12. Colloquium Vitae
13. Casi ciclici
14. Due apparecchi cosmici per la trasformazione

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