Music from Italy

2014 repress, originally released in 1998. First issued by the Mnemonists' label (Dys in the U.S.) in 1982. M.B.: proto-electronics, compositions, arrangements. Mektpyo Bakterium is a work furnished of implacable plastic exasperation. The icy oppres…

2014 repress, originally released in 1998. Reissue of a private LP, issued in an edition of 300 copies in 1982 by Maurizio Bianchi ; a skeletal extremist project that will then transform into the "soundtrack" of a movie with the same title, edited…

2014 repress, originally released in 2000. First issued on the Broken Flag label in the UK in an edition of 500 in 1983. A different style, providing some distance from all his previous works; a more expansive experimentation with multiple layers …

2014 repress of these classic M.B. albums (M.B. = Maurizio Bianchi, for those of you who haven't been saved yet). These were first reissued in 1998 by EEs'T (a division of Alga Marghen) and are now back again. Symphony... was the first M.B. album, …

Another voyage into the inky blackness with the cosmos-loving Italians and another gem. MCIAA have gone from making dronescapes that were merely beautiful to listen to (merely!) to vast vistas of sound that seem to exert an almost gravitational pull …

2006 release ** After more than 25 years, the italian industrial pioneer Maurizio Bianchi goes back where it all started from. Using the four tapes released under the name Sacher-Pelz as source material, he resurrectshis very first monicker and leads…

an original copy of an awesome Scelsi LP, featuring Hô (1960) - Four melodies for solo voices. Pranam I (1972) - (In memory of the tragic loss of Jani and Sia Christou) for voice, 12 instruments and tape. Khoom (1962) - (Seven episodes of a story of …

The first complete recording of Giacinto Scelsi's music for double bass, played by Robert Black with guests on cello, harp, tam-tam and second bass, including Ko-Tha in Fernando Grillo's transcription.

Atrax Morgue was the nom de plume of Italian noisy type Marco Corbelli. This album from '96 is a blood and thunder, bass heavy assault on the senses. Cold and surgical powerelectronics inspired by sickness, diseases and forensic pathology.

"HELIX PARASITES": built on the idea of genetic modification via new channels, this is probably our most diversified and composite work so far. With a strong trend for rhythms and subliminal pipes, it has at the same time some of the most outlandish …

Recorded at Sentemo Records, Cessalto (Italy) on 30 January and 1-2-20 February 1993, except track 5 recorded live 4 May 1991 at Teatro Comunale, Ferrara (Italy). "Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica", for 6 instruments and percussion, composed in 1951. "La F…

LAST COPIES...This album has been released on both a double CD and on a boxset of three LP's, and it's long out of print now; the  music is a combination of ambient and industrial which can sometimes sound fit for a horror movie. Heartbeats, the chat…

"Clic" is released in 1974 and it is truly of those art-popping creations Battiato ever managed to do - there are full analogies naming it a best ever album, there are voices that appreciate its corrosive attitude under quite exhaustive portraits, ev…

This is another one of Franco Battiato's amazing recordings from the 70's, and it features two extended pieces -- "ZA" and "Café Table Musik". "Za" is a long piece for solo piano, with lots of spare minimal moments, and haunting trancelike lines of c…

It is scored for two flutes, violin, viola, cello, bass clarinet and electric organ. This is a really beautiful piece of tranquil music, full of touching sweetness.

The first in a series of recordings devoted to the music of Giacinto Scelsi, devised by Stradivarius in conjunction with the Isabella Scelsi Foundation. The series comprises new, original recordings made in 2005, marking the hundredth anniversary of …

2008 release ** Lohengrin, Salvatore Sciarrino's "azione invisibile", is both a gloss on Wagner's opera and a sly debunking of it. It was conceived by its composer as an opera with action invisible, for one singer/actress who assumes all the characte…

Sciarrino's work is avant-garde, and he is known for his use of isolated sonorities, extended playing techniques, frequent silences, and ironic or confrontational quotation of previous music (for instance, American pop music) or stories (such as in L…

Futurism with its dynamic force, youthful spirit, attention to innovation and a bit of Italian histrionism; the sixties with their hopeful and playful atmosphere and their crisp and catchy music; Italy with its beautiful sun, beaches, Mediterranean b…

"an intoxicating blend of dark Ambient and steamy jazz. A vast, shifting blanket of atmospheric drones and textures, sourced in part from processed field recordings and occasionally spiced with samples ( a snippet of Ginsberg's Kaddish, some purring …