Cudù: Delivery (Materiali sonori, 1988)

Decadence can be lush, even without much overabundance. "Waterplay" is voluptuous, and layered, but its sound is essentially barren. The tracks float in some uninhabited ambient/jazz sea, secretly braced by the most diverse post-punk currents. Where they emerge, they draw the music close to no wave, or A Certain Ratio's punk/funk. Most of the times, though, it's the sonic imprint of Tuxedomoon, Brian Eno and David Torn that dominates.
Rarefied - yet omnipresent - synthetizers and sudden free-jazz zigzags: these are the antipodal souls the album masterly conciliates, never sacrificing atmosphere to obliqueness or vice versa.
And the cover version of The Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" is simply prodigious.

Cudù are a band from the Florence area. This is their second album, after the MiniLP "Neck".
The album was first posted on the blog Pinzillacchere musicali, which made it available on the net for the very first time after a long time of unobtainability.

Tracklist:

1. I Saw
2. Delivery
3. España
4. The Whistling of Time
5. The Bright Side of the Moon
6. Sweet Jane
7. Apocalypse Blues
8. No Result

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Similar music on the blog:
Nicola Alesini, Pier Luigi Andreoni: Marco Polo (Materiali sonori, 1996)
Minox: Lazare (Industrie Discografiche Lacerba, 1986)

La 1919: Jouer, Spielen, To Play (Materiali sonori, 1994)

Let's be sincere: free-improv stuff is usually very chaotic and/or very monotonous. It takes a fan to be fully appreciated. "Jouer, Spielen, To Play" is a bit different. Though entirely ad-libbed, it has very strong structures and dynamics. The reason is probably that its solid rhythm modules are laid by two giants of the avant-prog community: Henry Cow's Chris Cutler and This Heat's Charles Hayward.
The music, indeed, is very much in the spirit of such bands as Massacre or This Heat themselves. Kraut-rock beats (with a jazzier edge), rickety and terribly obliquous guitar lines, and that elusive air of stagnation and rot. Here, the ground-laying drums are supported by La. 1919 - Luciano Margorani (guitar, bass, loops) and Piero Chianura (sampler, synthetizer) - plus guitarist Roberto Zorzi. The tracks are much varied and definitely unmissable for every avant-prog lover.

La 1919, from Milan, published quite a lot of stuff under different names. This should be their fourth album.

Tracklist:

1. Hanno seppellito l'uomo sbagliato
2. Sheffield Wednesday
3. Fate fagotto!
4. Storie del dormiveglia
5. Qua qua qua... Singing Ducks
6. Donne Kamikaze
7. Un mondo invisibile
8. Red Wire
9. The Drumming Talk

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Similar albums on the blog:

Art Fleury: I luoghi del potere (Italian Records, 1980)
Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata: omonimo (Azteco, 1983)

Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata: omonimo (Azteco, 1983)

Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata began as a one-man-band hiding the multi-instrumentist and sound engineer Simon Balestrazzi, which would later join Kino Glaz, Kirlian Camera, Bron Y Aur.
His first LP under the name T.A.C. came out in 1983 (or maybe in 1982) and features a very peculiar, Nurse With Wound-ish sound interbreeding such diverse styles as no-wave, electronic experimentation, progressive rock, radical improvisation and post-punk.
The rattling, crunchy guitar sound isn't far from Fred Frith's distinctive style in his no-wave project Massacre, and the shattered jazzy orbits it follows are quite close too. The telluric funk-punk basslines contribute creating bony, deconstructed pieces with everchanging rhythms and meters. Then come the electronic incursions of polluted radio frequencies and background buzzes, which give the music an eerie, dismantled feeling.
The lyrics are often quasi-nonsensical, but reflect the aftermath of the strong political engagement of the Seventies. Repetition and obsessive rants are the key elements of Balestrazzi's neurotic vocal style.
T.A.C. sound is completed by occasional free saxophone bursts, atonal piano figures and sparse folkloric remindings. The final result is something between Henry Cow, This Heat, The Work, with a more sinister, industrial mood.


Tracklist:

1. Un umido
2. I sette piani dell'esperienza
3. Cerco lavoro
4. Microprozessore
5. Citocromo
6. Onde corte
7. Autistico
8. Percussioni
9. Introdotta la scrofa nel mattatoio
10. Quasi pieno
11. El motel electrico
12. 49° parallelo

Download (160 kbps)