Kind of Cthulhu: Wadjĭwĭng' (Azteco, 1987)

"Obscure"'s the best term to describe this record. It's obscure in a musical sense, for its sound and atmospheres, and in a documentary sense: to be short, almost no information about it can be found on the web.
Let's focus on music first. Wadjĭwĭng' is a quite surprising "progressive" blossom of mid-Eighthies industrial music experimentation. While the mood and approach decidedly reflect the taste for decadence, vagueness and approximation which is a defining trait of some industrial music circles, the musical form and the sound of the tracks are much closer to early-Seventies "dark" psychedelia (long instrumental tracks and digressions, organ, choirs...) and, most amazingly, to full-fledged progressive music. There are sombre, percussive sections reminding of Magma and eerie keyboard ostinatos not far from Goblin stuff. Then chamber-music sketches (Julverne? Maybe even Aksak Maboul), exoteric folk allures (Comus!), airy flute passages and soft openings which even seem to hint at the dreamiest episodes of Italian progressive (Pierrot Lunaire?).
Many comparisons can be traced, but none seems to grasp the essence and singularity of this album, basically a fish out of water, a progressive album made with strictly post-punk sounds, recording techniques, instrumental skills, and mentality. In some sense, is an utterly imprecise work; on the other hand, though, this clumsiness's necessary for its uniqueness and charm.

The few data that are known about the album help to guess its context, but don't enframe it exactly. Kind of Cthulhu was a project based in Parma and signed to the short-lived label Azteco Records, active between 1983 and 1988 and linked to the band T.A.C. (Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata) and its related post-industrial community. Two records were published under the evidently Lovecrafian moniker Kind of Cthulhu: an ep in 1986, and this lp. All of the two featured contributions by T.A.C. founder Simon Balestrazzi (later of Kirlian Camera) and credit a steady core of musicians, which were most probably the members of the band: Andrea Ascenso, Antonio ("Franz"?) Menozzi, Marco Cattabiani, Mario Mascitelli.

Tracklist:

1. Liutelio
2. Overload
   
3. What's This Kind of Cthulhu?
4. A Believer
5. Red Wine
   
6. Wadjĭwĭng'
7. Next Spring
   
8. Thrust of Love
9. Misk Cjezscjesz

Credits:

• Marco Cattabiani: bass, keyboards, harmonica, vocals, effects 
• Patrizia Mattioli: clarinet
• Andrea Azzali: double bass
• Mario Mascitelli: drums, percussion, bass, vocals, indian flute
• Franz Menozzi: guitar, flute, keyboards, percussion, vocals
• Andrea Ascenso: lead vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion, bass, drums
• Massimo Colonna: saxophone
• Paola Sartori: violin
• Patrizia Mattioli, Simon Balestrazzi: vocals
• Ivano Bizzi: Engineer

Any additional information about the band and the record is welcome, of course!

Download  (320 kbps)


Similar music on the blog:
Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata: omonimo (Azteco, 1983)
Goblin: The Goblin Collection, 1975-1989 (DRG, 1995)

VV.AA.: Ref. 907 (Italian Records, 1981)

An early compilation witnessing the earliness and originality of Italian minimal-synth scene. Published by the quintessential new wave label Italian Records, it features a selection of three songs for each of five bands: Eurotunes, Ipnotico Tango, Metal Vox, Absurdo, Kerosene.
Almost no information about the bands can be found on the internet, but Eurotunes have a Myspace page and it says they were based in Rome. The overall sound of the record, anyway, isn't that far in spirit from the one of the mostly Bolognese bands heralded by Italian Records: Gaznevada, Stupid Set, Hi-fi bros, Confusional Quartet. It is, basically, de-evoluted rock based on primitive-sounding synthetizers, with very repetitive beats and skeletal riffing held by the sawtooth register of the keyboards. As for the aforementioned Italian Records bands, the prominent references seem to be the contemporary scene of the American North-East, with two subtler yet distinct influences coming from the alienating synth-pop sounds of Sheffield and post-industrial England, and perhaps more evidently from the New York no wave/mutant disco circuit - the latter fact making many tracks remind of the extraordinary "Great Complotto" scene of Pordenone.
The defining trait differentiating the five bands of Ref. 907 from their labelmates is essentially the darkness and illness of their sound. Though it has almost nothing in common with the growing "darkwave" trend of those years (no abyss and woe, at all) the music shows a taste for bleak and morbid atmospheres, combined with schizoid/spastic vocals and discomforting instrumental intermissions.
The bands are quite different one from the other, but I'll let you discover yourself their particularities. I'll just say everytime I listen to this compilation I have different opinions on what's my favourite!

Tracklist:

1. Eurotunes: European's Progress
2. Eurotunes: I Got the Beak
3. Eurotunes: Osaki Motion
4. Ipnotico Tango: Ipnotico Tango
5. Ipnotico Tango: Spasmodico Rango
6. Ipnotico Tango: Erotico Mango
7. Metal Vox: Future World
8. Metal Vox: T.V. Hero
9. Metal Vox: Infinity
10. Absurdo: O'vel
11. Absurdo: Audio Output
12. Abdurdo: Sex in Ball
13. Kerosene: Meccano
14. Kerosene: Jazz Rock
15. Kerosene: Stivali

Download (256 kbps)
The compilation was already posted on Mutant Sounds, but some tracks were missing.


Similar music on the blog:
Gaznevada: Sick Soundtrack (Italian Records, 1980)
Confusional Quartet: omonimo (1980)

Central Unit: Central Unit + Loving Machinery (M.P. Records, 2003)

The unquiet waverings of Tuxedomoon spawned a whole school in the Italian underground. This record (a sum of two actually, see below) heralds the tendency: skeletal electronic beats and evanescent synth atmospheres, combined with mechanical basslines and relentless violin meanderings, with slothy saxophone murmurs peeping out here and there.
The music is ghostly, decadent, and subtly soggy; it never sounds epic or apocalyptic though, nor excessively amateurish (it's not minimal wave, to make a long story short). On the contrary, it sounds quite elaborate: its orbits are knotty and obliquous, and its mood is the mood of fallen aristocracy.

Central Unit were a band from Bologna. They were among the first in Italy to manipulate synths, drum machines and other electronic devices to create atmospheric soundscapes. This is a reprint of their first LP (produced by Tuxedomoon's Peter Principle), together with a preceding EP.

Tracklist:
 Central Unit LP (1983)

1. Detective Fredd
2. Orient-Express
3. Mas rapido
4. Primavera di Kaspar
5. Grotesque
6. Bailamme
7. Mordor
8. Où Papè d'Où Marcocù
9. Aiumassah!
10. Die Flucht Ohne Ende

Loving Machinery EP (1982)

1. Saturday Night
2. Rock Onze
3. What Use? (Version)
4. Beset City

Download (192 kbps) (re-up)


Similar albums on the blog:
Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici: GMM (Materiali Sonori, 1985)

Minox: Lazare (Industrie Discografiche Lacerba, 1986)

Militia: Elvengamello (Materiali Sonori, 1997)

Elusive, but bewitching: "Elvengamello" is a voyage through obscure landscapes, memories that intersect and tangle each other. Deliberately fragmentary, but connected through a subliminal narrative flow, an esoteric mood which cleverly creeps between a haunting sense of decadence and a detached taste for intellectual constructions.

The musical palette encompasses a wide range of influences, but most of all a constant - yet indirect - reference to a trans-cultural Mediterranean heritage. A mix of Arabian, Northern-African and South Italian folkloric echoes enriching the setting of the global end-of-the-Empire atmosphere.
Other references are surely the wavering suspension of Tuxedomoon, or the emaciated utopism of CCCP. Industrial percussions, urticant (but extremely discerned) guitars and spare multi-language spoken-word intermissions are the last elements of a firmly unhortodox sound-world that even verges on progressive.

This is the second LP by Militia, a band from Perugia. Founded in 1979, they crossed the Eighties without publishing almost anything: their first record is a 1985 EP, the second one (the album "Dunarobba") dates 1990. Some of their members, though, created the important label Materiali Sonori, which printed all of their few records besides many other interesting works by Italian and international artists (Tuxedomoon, A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column etc.).


Tracklist:

1. 17 Pluviose
2. Vorrei morire
3. Elvengamello
4. Fila & strocca
5. Mare crudele (2)
6. Su Santitad
7. Giorno dopo giorno
8. A Map of Valentine
9. Il male, il peggio
10. Welmite Notizen
11. Il fuoco e il vino
12. Disquisizione
13. Hua
14. Sciopero generale
15. Untitled

Download (128 kbps)

Similar albums on the blog:
Nicola Alesini, Pier Luigi Andreoni: Marco Polo (Materiali sonori, 1996)
L'enfance rouge: Trapani - Halq al Waady (Wallace, 2008)

Contropotere: Il seme della devianza (Skuld, 1991)

A grim, filthy, monster-heavy post-hardcore maelstrom, often on the brink of thrash metal (even doom metal at times). The songs are long, tortuous and convulsive: an everchanging flow of guitar stabs, upsetting vocal howls which reminds more of a black magic rite than of an ordinary hardcore punk record. A constant hail of blast beats, broken by apocalyptic sludge riffs and chainsaw intrusions (or offhand King Crimson quotes) even seem to mark the entrance to the chaotic realm of Today Is the Day, Neurosis or Flying Luttembachers. The frightening frame is completed by an aggressive anti-capitalist stance, a devious, cyberpunk version of the anarcho-punk attitude of Franti or The Ex.

"Il seme della devianza" isn't really an accomplished record: it's awfully recorded and the unravelling of the tracks is clumsy and unmemorable. But it's daring, utterly original, and it almost gives the shivers.

Contropotere were a band from Naples, founded in 1985 and disbanded ten years later. "Il seme della devianza" is their second LP, and it was followed just by two other EPs.

Tracklist:

1. La chiave del tempo
2. Templum desertii
3. Clonazione
4. Baghdad: la morte in diretta
5. Urragan
6. U.S.P. (Uniformità Sociale Precostituita)

Download (192 kbps)

Similar albums on the blog:

Franti: Non classificato (1987)

Taras Bul'ba: Incisione (Wallace, 2005)

Transgender: Sen Soj Trumàs (Snowdonia/New LM Record, 2003)

A fiercely cross-style and cross-reference record, on the brink of prog-rock, post-rock, post-punk. The music plunges into King Crimson distorted assaults, Tortoise-like angular weavings, Mr. Bungle's provincial matchings, muscolarity, rarefyings. The vocals are mostly sung in a disquieting fictitious language and the treatment is often dystopian and futurist, maybe reminding the kitsch and hypertrophic imaginary of Trans AM. Some French here and there, an excerpt declaimed by Giovanni Lindo Ferretti and nonchalantly overblown circus/fanfare episodes, noisy bursts and mellotron-soaked textures are just some of the many odd-tasting elements scattered like raisins in a panettone.

Transgender are an Emilian band. This is their second studio album after a bunch of demo CDs. "Mey Ark Vu" followed in 2006.

ps. If you have a bigger/higher definition artwork image, please give me a link!

Tracklist:

1. Dre Oucantèlva
2. Multìs
3. Le dernier jour
4. Craud
5. Dre Foè
6. Mavra (Sal a ruè)
7. Mantra
8. Spoony Geeza
9. A Crime Memoir
10. Dernier jour (Remix by Serial)

Download (160 kbps)

Similar albums on the blog:

Corleone: Wei Wu Wei (Etnagigante/V2 Records Italia, 2005)

C.C.C.P. Fedeli alla linea: Epica etica etnica pathos (Virgin, 1990)

Not Moving: Sinnermen (Spittle Records, 1986)

The idea behind "Sinnermen" is quite simple: Let's play some sort of new wave with loads of Morricone-like flangers'n'reverbs. The result could have sounded just as elegant and minimal as Wall of Voodoo, or as deviant and funny as Man or Astro-Man, but is actually quite dissimilar to both.
The point is that "Sinnermen" is so poorly recorded and awfully played that it sounds like nothing else. The songs are some sort of primeval cherokee-rock dirges. Organ's everywhere, the mood is rather dark and psychedelic and this would probably remind of The Stranglers (or The Doors), if only the guitars didn't desperately try to imitate The Shadows and the English pronounciation weren't so ridiculous.
So clumsy, so original and so provincial, "Sinnermen" is definitely funnier than the average Italian post-punk album. Even beautiful, here and there.

Not Moving were founded in 1981, taking their name from a DNA song. "Sinnermen" is their first LP, produced by the renown music journalist Federico Guglielmi.


Tracklist:

1. Sinnerman
2. Catman
3. I Know Your Feelings
4. The Lost Bay
5. My Lovely Loved
6. Pray For Your God
7. You Really Got Me Babe
8. A Wonderful Night to Die
9. Land of Nothing
10. A Life Long
11. Sucide Temple
12. Mr. Nothing
13. Ice Eyes Baby
14. In the Batland
15. Cocksucker Blues

Download (192 kbps)

Art Fleury: I luoghi del potere (Italian Records, 1980)

Art Fleury were a trio from Brescia devoted to a deeply suburban and experimental progressive rock. Though obviously in debt with King Crimson, especially for the guitar style, their attitude was much closer to more radical and nihilist bands such as Faust, The Residents or This Heat. Their influence is pretty evident on all of the four tracks which compose their debut album: heavily destructured narrations of the industrial gloom, merging tape material, atonal organ or orchestral puddles and restrained arpeggios, occasionally broken by convulsive prog-rock bursts.
The band had indeed more than some contacts with the left-wing R.I.O. scene, having opened several times for Henry Cow concerts and played together with Area and bands from L'Orchestra cooperative (Stormy Six, Art Bears, Etron Fou Leloublan and many more).

"I luoghi del potere" is a fascinating work, pervaded by a dreary, disillusioned mood which constitutes a strong and well-conceived critique of industrial and Cold War alienation. Besides being a masterpiece of Italian progressive rock, it's also one of the very few ones to show a very distinct post-punk leaning: it's an important document of the late-70s transitions.



Tracklist:

1. Uno spettro si aggira per le brigate Hans Eisler
2. Fabbrica rosa
3. E=mc² (la collina del timo)
4. La morte al lavoro

Download (256 kbps)

Gaznevada: Sick Soundtrack (Italian Records, 1980)

I've already mentioned that I don't usually appreciate Italian music with English vocals and just a few exceptions prove the rule. Bolognese band Gaznevada are one of those and this should give an idea of the band's greatness.
Their debut LP "Sick Soundtrack" fuses prance funk-punk, scraggy no wave guitars and the modular rhythms of the so-called "mutant disco" scene (Liquid Liquid, Lizzy Mercier Descloux etc.). A nonsensical, dadaist attitude dominates the merger and its retrofuturistic electronic inserts often make the sound resemble to the one of their Devo-addicted fellows Confusional Quartet.
The English pronounciation is awful, sometimes even grotesque, but the abstracted, metropolitan grooves of the album really make the music something unique, not only from a Italo-centric outlook.


Tracklist:

1. Going Underground
2. Japanese Girl
3. Shock antistatico
4. Pordenone Ufo Attack
5. Tij-U-Wan
6. Oil Tubes
7. Nightmare Telegraph
8. Walkytalkin'
9. Now I Want to Kill You

Download (192 kbps)

C.C.C.P. Fedeli alla linea: Epica etica etnica pathos (Virgin, 1990)

The last studio album by the most influential rock band of the Italian Eighties is a transitional work, but a masterpiece nonetheless. Firmly stepping away from the iconoclast, proudly provincial post-punk of their previous releases, the band comes both in an enriched sound and an enriched line-up.
CCCP salvage the middle-eastern dystopia of their old song "Punk Islam", the squallid Emilian ballo liscio accordion remindings and the trademark psalmodies of their leader, Giovanni Lindo Ferretti. The covenant with Litfiba exiles Gianni Maroccolo, Francesco Magnelli and Ringo De Palma brings in many new flavours, which come to materialize an unpreceded concotion.
Mystical, ancient and disillusioned, scraggy and dilated, utterly provincial yet covering (almost) the whole Mediterranean area with its influences, "Epica etica etnica pathos" is a very complex work which prefigures and probably excels the world music emptyings of soon-to-be Consorzio Suonatori Indipendenti.


Tracklist:

1. Aghia Sophia
2. Paxo de Jerusalem
3. Sofia
4. Narko$ (contiene Baby Blue)
5. Campestre
6. Depressione caspica
7. In occasione della festa
8. Amandoti (sedicente cover)
9. L'andazzo generale
10. El ayam
11. Appunti di un viaggiatore nella terra del socialismo reale
12. Mozzill'o re
13. Campestre
14. Maciste contro tutti
15. Annarella

Download (192 kbps)

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)

Üstmamò: omonimo (Virgin, 1991)

"Üstmamò" means "right now" in the dialect of the Emilian Appennine mountains, where this very original band came from. Though they were strongly connected with the early Nineties Consorzio Produttori Indipendenti scene (C.S.I., Disciplinatha, Marlene Kuntz and so on) they had a very playful and amateurish sound which made them stand out from their crewmates.
Their first album is an explosive mix of post-punk, traditional music souvenirs, reggae/ska, rough electronic beats and who knows what else. The description fits accurately with the worst kind of Italian "alternative" anarcho-leftist stuff, but Ustmamò are really unique. They're funny, somehow natty despite their clumsy attitude: dialect, national anthems, nursery rhymes, drum machines, violin and raw guitar chords all come together to create a courageous, smart and accomplished formula which won't fail to make an impression.


Tracklist:

1. Üstmamò
2. Filikudi
3. Fila filastrocca
4. Stupito sguardo
5. Strocca - Canzone d'accatto
6. Vengo a voi...
7. Amminramp
8. Lieto evento finale
9. Vietato vietato
10. 100 pecore e 1 montone
11. C'era una volta... un re
12. Torna maggio

Download (224 kbps)

Franti: Non classificato (1987)

For the first post on my newborn music blog, I chose the complete works edition of this atypical post-punk band from Turin. They formed in 1982 and published 3 LPs (one was a split), some tapes and 12'' between 1982 and 1986.
Their style was eclectic and mixed a raw hardcore punk attitude with jazz, folk, world music and progressive rock elements. Some of their songs are surprisingly close to the Canterbury-sounding Picchio dal pozzo or later Stormy Six, though the atmosphere is usually rather decadent. They could be compared to Dutch collective The Ex for their experimental, folk-oriented approach.
Most of the tracks are sung in Italian, with male and female vocals, but some other are in English.
The overall quality is definitely impressive.

More informations (in Italian) can be found here.


Tracklist:
Cd # 1
1. No future
2. Preachin' blues
3. Io nella notte
4. Only a new film
5. Le loro voci
6. Chiara realizzazione di Ryonen
7. Joey
8. Lasciateci sentire ora
9. Vento rosso
10. Solidi (strumentale)
11. The week song
12. 1984 / Gates of Eden
13. Questa è l'ora
14. Quesiti da sciogliere
15. Voghera
16. Prete, croce, sedia, morte
17. Io nella notte (live)
18. Gloria (live)
Cd # 2
19. Dopo ci penso
20. Vanni's variations
21. Solidi
22. La mia casa
23. Il battito del cuore
24. Acqua di luna
25. L'uomo sul balcone di Beckett
26. Every time
27. (ai Negazione)
28. Hollywood Army / Big Black Mothers
29. Micrò Micrò
30. Elena 5 e 9
31. Nel giorno secolo
32. À suivre
33. Nel salto dell'ascia sul legno
Cd #3
34. Non sarà
35. Fino a quando
36. Un sorriso nella voce
37. Ogni giorno
38. Buio in tasca
39. Senti
40. Femme fatale

Download (re-up):
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5