Deeply engaging on numerous planes - as work of process oriented conceptualism, sound art, or simply as a blistering gesture of Noise - the Melbourne-based artist, Marco Fusinato, returns with The Horizon is a Razor, an astounding limited edition LP issued by Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (PAC) Milan, in connection with his show The Only True Anarchy is That of Power. Harnessing a decades deep practice, blurring the lines between fine art contexts and musical extremes, within each of its states of evolution Fusinato unleashing a towering body of music that subtly doubles as critical illumination of the cultural importance and internal workings of Noise itself.

From its earliest incarnations within Dada and Futurism, moving through the sonic efforts of visual artists like Jean Dubuffet, Dieter Roth, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Beuys, Mike Kelley, Hanne Darboven, Martin Kippenberger, and numerous others, the idiom of sound art has continuously displayed a fascinating relationship to music; confounding, illuminating, and expanding the dimensions of how we might understand and relate to that realm of creativity. For more than two decades, the Melbourne-based artist and noise musician, Marco Fusinato, has persistently expanded upon this lineage of practice, while forging a highly distinct and separate path. Rather than simply being a visual artist who mines musical references and relationships as means to make new meaning, Fusinato's output in gallery, performance, and recorded contexts exists within deeply integrated practice, producing a fascinating feedback loop between the visual and auditory realms and specifies of context that most often apply to each. In conjunction with the opening of The Only True Anarchy is That of Power, a new exhibition drawing together important recent works by Fusinato at Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (PAC) Milan, we've been honored to lend humble production assistance to PAC's release of The Horizon is a Razor, an astounding new audio work by the artist. Infusing the realms of process oriented conceptual art with the blistering sonic extremes of noise and metal, the openness of free improvisation, and the transcendence of minimalism and ambient music, this incredible two-part work is issued in a stunningly produced, limited vinyl edition, housed in a sleeve featuring a 1798 painting by Francesco Fidanza entitled "Incendio di un porto di mare". As he always has over the year, Fusinato pushes sound practice into uncharted realms, infusing new meaning and density into the idiom in ways that challenges and enlightens the mind as much as the ears.

Born in 1964 and jointly emerging into the wider consciousness within both the fine-art and musical contexts during the 1990s and 2000s, the Melbourne-based artist, Marco Fusinato, represents a rare convergence of multidisciplinary creative practice and rigorous ideas, working across the fields of installation, sculpture, photography, performance, and recording. Fusinato regards his output as succession of interrelated projects - some continuing across numerous iterations - rather than autonomous expressions, helping to confound, in satisfying ways, the distinctions between his gallery, performance, and musical practices, though perhaps some insight into subtle distinctions might be gleaned from the fact that many of his ambitious projects and exhibitions bear connections to leftist-political and topical concerns, as well experimental music references, through their titling, while the many albums that he has released over the decades tend to embrace more ethereal and abstract headings. Since the survey of Fusinato's activities, penned by the Dead C.'s Bruce Russell, appeared in The Wire back in 2005, the artist's star has justifiably been ascending toward greater acclaim, leading his inclusion in critically heralded exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, 56th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the 21st Biennale of Sydney, before culminating with his being selected to represent Australia at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2022, where he presented DESASTRES, a 200-day "performance as installation". The Only True Anarchy is That of Power - a subtle nod to ideas from within the Italian philosopher and political theorist Giorgio Agamben's 1995 text Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life - a exhibition opening this month, drawing together important recent works by Fusinato at Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (PAC) in Milan, marks the artist's first return to Italy since DESASTRES.

The Only True Anarchy is That of Power features three ongoing projects that encounter Fusinato exploring the theme of noise, one of which is the LP The Horizon is a Razor, issued by PAC. The album joins the exhibition within a room containing the artist's 12-inch vinyl record releases of live and studio solo noise-guitar recordings, created from 2009 onward, all unified by a design choices that contrasts an image from art history on the front cover with an image from the mass media on the back, creating "visual collisions in alignment with the recorded carnage..." Despite the thematic interconnectedness of the exhibition's components, the artist regards The Horizon is a Razor as more directly interfacing with the world of music, rather operating on the terms established by the visual realm, pointing toward reference points for the album's sound that include the "down-tuned saturation" of Japanese doom/sludge metal band, Corrupted, "the free aspects of Masayuki Takayanagi, the crushing fingers of Cecil Taylor and the howl of Albert Ayler... etc". Recorded in two separate studio sessions with an all-aluminum guitar - fed through an overload of distortion and 100-watt amplifiers at decibels that cause speaker blowout - both sides of the record begin with the same down-tuned chord before charting alternate trajectories through improvisation, feedback, and immersive sheets of noise.

While the two sides of The Horizon is a Razor are unified by a similar approach to sonic extremes, each side draws to light the highly nuanced possibilities possible within the spectrum, the first side pushing the slowly unfolding tonal progressions of sludge and doom metal toward an almost minimalist sensibility as they unify as ambiences and subtly pulse. The second side lets loose the restraint that defines its predecessor, internalizing and unleashing ferocity free improvisation, without ever indulging the virtuosic displays that can plague metal, within structures that sometimes border on the cohesion of drone.

Writing in 2024, Alan Licht said it best, stating; "Marco's work is clearly formidable as noise music, but the degree to which he's integrated it into his overall practice and the way his performances engage and contend with the mores of presenting and encountering work at institutions within a fine art context sets him apart in the long lineage of 'noise-making' by those known primarily for visual - or even conceptual - art." While The Horizon is a Razor entirely works as gesture of noise and stands tall among the best efforts within the idiom, the ideas that percolate across the album, not to mention its multidimensional interface with the context of visual art, almost serve as critical illumination of the cultural importance and internal workings of noise music itself. Absolutely engrossing on sonic and cerebral terms, The Horizon is a Razor is issued by PAC in a stunningly produced, limited vinyl edition, housed in a sleeve featuring a 1798 painting by Francesco Fidanza entitled "Incendio di un porto di mare" on the front cover and an archival newspaper image from Fusinato's research library depicting "scavengers scrounging for food" on the back. Wherever it fits in your collection, alongside seminal gestures of noise, sound art, or artist records, this one is essential and high among the most engaging records of the year so far.