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

Download (192 kbps)


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

Download (192 kbps)

L'enfance rouge: Trapani - Halq al Waady (Wallace, 2008)

Italo-French band L'enfance rouge has a veteran trans-European attitude: they record their albums all around the continent and dedicate them to European cities. Both their angular, noisy rock and their European internationalism link them directly with the cult Dutch post-punk band The Ex. With their sixth album, they borrow a very strong Mediterranean influence thanks to the collaboration of the Institut Superieur de Musique of Tunisi.

The overall atmosphere has the charm of remote, millenary trade routes. It evocates the last centuries of a decadent Costantinopolis, a crucible of cultures, dangers and long-lost wealth. Ruthless noise-rock sabre blows, dreary French poetries about galleys and kalashnikovs, pachidermal, lethargic basslines hybridate the French noise-rock school (Bästard, Ulan Bator) with bewitching oud vapours and flute arabesques.
Light peeps out very rarely: just a few times Pink Floyd and Godspeed You Black Emperor! substitute Slint and Massimo Volume as guardian angels of the disillusioned, mature and extremely captivating fusion of the album.


Tracklist:

1. Otranto
2. Ras et Ahmar
3. Ana Lastu Amrikyyan
4. Tombeau pour New York
5. Azizati
6. Lame de fond
7. Vendicatori
8. Nous
9. Hurricane Lily
10. Terre d'élection
11. Petite-mort

Download (192 kbps)

Taras Bul'ba: Incisione (Wallace, 2005)

The music of Taras Bul'ba is deeply haunting and blazing. They bridge the compound-meter constructions of math-rock, the ultra-Sabbathian grooves of stoner and sludge metal and the figurative dynamics of the soft/loud post-rock school (Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky), finally combining them with a mesmerizing psychedelic approach. Heavy, harsh and hot-tempered, their second album "Incisione" is dominated by an esoteric, Tool-like spirit propelled by overwhelming bass-drums interlocks. Though entirely instrumental, the music perfectly succeeds in creating a mind-blowing, blistering claustrophobia.


Tracklist:

1. Moder (under Uns)
2. Miyuki
3. Hari
4. Congo
5. Imothep
6. Mrs. Mary St. Aubin
7. Solyaristika
8. Der Golem

Download (224 kbps)

Zu: Igneo (Wide Records, 2002)

Roman band Zu is one of the most renown Italian bands abroad in the field of indipendent rock. They teamed up with such acclaimed artists as Damo Suzuki, Eugene Chadbourne, Mats Gustaffson, Nobukazu Takemura, Iceburn and Dälek.
"Igneo" is their second and most appreciated album, the one where their arsonist impro-rock formula really comes in focus for the first time. Bass, drums and saxophone blend the jazzcore hurly-burly of NoMeansNo, the angular, math-y constructions of Larks' Tongues-era King Crimson and John Zorn's convulsive freeform approach. Starting from this album, Zu's style has quickly become a cornerstone for the experimental rock scene.


Tracklist:

1. The Elusive Character of Victory
2. Arbol de la esperanza mantente
3. Monte Zu
4. Untitled Samba for Kat Ex
5. Muro torto
6. Tinkun Olam
7. Mar Glaciale Artico

Download (192 kbps)