Music from Italy

Although he left an extended and varied output, including five major stage-works, several shorter dramatic pieces, a number of significant choral and orchestral works (not least the famous Sinfonia of 1968), and a sizeable body of instrumental and vocal pieces, the music of Luciano Berio is encapsulated in the Sequenza series running through 34 years of his creativity. Not only have many of them set standards for performance prowess and stamina, each embodies a redefining of the technical limits…

First official release of this Italian sonic assoult. Harsh psychedelic noise influenced by C.C.C.C. and Incapacitans. LP comes in a deluxe silver silk screen on black cardboard sleeve, and is limited to 114 hand numbered copies. Possibly the most extreme recording you will ever own!

Second installment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. The Vol.II sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Californian visual and sound artist Steve Roden. What makes this collaborative release so peculiar is the natural interactive exchange occurred between the artists, and that came out from the concept behind the experience itself. Roden's contribution thus represents the unique e…

Third installment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. The Vol.III sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Japanese cult musician and dark shaman Keiji Haino. Imagine a cosmic bomb exploding in your brain, and you'll have an approximate idea of this collaborative release. So, dear new-weird-america's hippy, you'd better keep your ass away from this total blast!.. no freak-folk here. …

Fourth volume in the ongoing "Cosmic Debris" series of split ART-LP releases set up by the Opalio brothers, aka MY CAT IS AN ALIEN (MCIAA), on their own Opax Records. This time the space improv duo from Torino, Italy, shares one side of the vinyl with Swedish radical saxophonist MATS GUSTAFSSON, whose twenty-year career boasts collaborations that range widely over the contemporary improvised music world, from masters of the free jazz such as Peter Brotzmann, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, to famous m…

The fifth and final volume in the "Cosmic Debris" series of split ART-LP releases set up by the Opalio brothers, aka MY CAT IS AN ALIEN (MCIAA), on their own Opax Records, ends up at its best with the space duo sharing the vinyl surface with the legendary avant-blues guitarist Loren M. Connors. Connors, who can be considered as the last real bluesman on earth, has the rare ability to turn single guitar chords into pure poetry, and don't you think we all need more of that in these dark days? The …

The entire recording of the improvised live performance at Ed Pinsent’s "Sound Projecting" radio show, broadcasted by London’s Resonance 104.4 fm on December 10th 2004. In these sessions MCIAA don’t play their usual cosmic guitars, but only a couple of space toys & toy-microphones, plus a pocket theremin & mini-casio provided by Pinsent on the occasion; also featuring Pinsent himself at turntables. A different aspect of MCIAA’s experimental research, as well as a new amazing adventure through th…

New Opax edition of this key-work, recorded in Fall 2003 at the glorious MCIAA's Space Room studio which was based in an abandoned factory zone in Torino, Italy, and where all the Opalio brothers' first recordings saw the light! Based on a spoken-word poem whispered by Roberto Opalio over the space brothers' subtle texture of percussions, guitars and electronics, and now newly available in two lavishly packaged vinyl editions. Vinyl with handwritten labels, in handmade heavy cardboard folder jac…

Original soundtrack from Roberto Opalio's film 'Alien Blood' (2005-2008), currently shown at SONIC YOUTH etc.: SENSATIONAL FIX museum exhibition, opened at LiFE museum (France) in June 2008, and already scheduled around the globe for the next couple of years. The improvised score by My Cat Is An Alien follows the minimal and surrealistic beginning of the film with sparse echoes of eerie sounds, growing in dark timbres and pathos. Maurizio Opalio's heavily effected 'blood percussions' compress th…

Folk Songs, written in 1964, has long been one of Berio's most popular works. A series of eleven songs for mezzo and chamber ensemble, it is couched in an accessible language with more than a hint of Stravinsky in the instrumentation. The songs here are not all folk songs: some are arrangements of popular songs in folk style and a couple are original Berio compositions, while the last song was transcribed from an old scratched 78 by the composer's then-wife Cathy Berberian. This performance, if …

Luciano Berio was commissioned to write a work for the New York Philharmonic's 150th anniversary. What resulted was the Sinfonia, a masterpiece of the twentieth century musical movement. This work combines many of the Italian composers fascinations - from Mahler to Martin Luther King - and sympathizes them. The result is fascinating, stimulating, and thoroughly enjoyable. Boulez's interpretation is really top-notch. He leads the orchestra with great power, gusto, and energy. This vision is evide…

Music performed by the Ensemble Musique Vivante, laying down a turbulent racket of avant-crinkle, over which the 4-piece Chorale Experimentale bellows vocal confusion. Berio has also succeeded in discovering sounds, phrasings, effects of all kinds which have permitted him to venture further and further into areas which had so far been thought impermissible or impossible for the human voice. These investigations are magisterially reflected in the larger works and particularly in 'Laborintus II.

Transcendent and phantasmagorical work from one of the premier visionaries of the Italian cosmic rock continuum that includes the likes of Franco Battiato, Pierrot Lunaire, Franco Leprino and Arturo Stalteri (to name check just a few), and his work here on "Comme Un Vecchio...", while absent some of the blasted rockist momentum of his debut LP "Aria" ripples and shudders across your consciousness with such palpable psychotropic force, a contact high is almost a forgone conclusion. The deeply fol…

Luigi Nono began Como una ola de fuerza y luz (Like a wave of strength and light) as a piece for piano and orchestra in 1971, at the instigation of Maurizio Pollini. While the composition was in progress, Nono learned of the death of a young Chilean revolutionary and recast the work in his memory, with added parts for soprano soloist and tape. The resulting half hour work is clearly a lament, encompassing various expressions of grief, from stunned sorrow to anguish to the fiercest rage. As a kin…

2006 release ** "After the "A M.B. Iehn Tale" release (CD - SmallVoices 2005) for the first time Maurizio Bianchi meets TH26, historical Italian project in dark electronics. After their first official release ("La Haine" CD - SmallVoices 2002) they are now back with this amazing cooperation. For this release TH26 leaves their usual rhythmical attitude, in perfect symbiosis with Maurizio Bianchi, the "father" of Italian industrial music. This work presents deep obscure minimal soundscapes, moving…

This release is the reissue of the original one, once released in different form, as a limited edition cd-r on Tom Greenwood's U-Sound Archive (Vol. 19). Improvisation recorded on February 12th, 2004 at MCIAA's Space Room, Torino, Italy (no overdubs/ no outtakes). This new vinyl edition is a different version, remastered and re-edited of "Different shades of Blue". Furthermore, this special edition will include also the un-edited artwork originally made by Roberto Opalio and completely inspired …

CD re-issue of the second installment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. The Vol.II sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Californian visual and sound artist Steve Roden. What makes this collaborative release so peculiar is the natural interactive exchange occurred between the artists, and that came out from the concept behind the experience itself. Roden's contribution thus repr…

My Cat Is An Alien also share a split CD with Turntable-manipulator Christian Marclay and cellist Okkyung Lee, and it is their live collaboration “Rubbing” that opens the album. Full of disjointed sounds, scratches and stabs of cello, the piece is a rollercoaster of sonic experimentation, the two players complementing each other to create a wonderfully playful piece of music. After A tentative sounding opening “Beyond The Limit Of The Stars/Beyond The Limit Of The Grooves” Slowly begins to becom…

Bianchi began to produce music in 1979, at the peak of the industrial scene since 1980 using electronic equipment with the avowed goal 'to produce technological sounds and in such a way to work on complete realizing of the modern decadence,' but his works harked back to the musique concrete of the 1950s. This CD is a return to his early work. Maurizio Bianchi/M.B.: archaic waves, ancient loops, primitive electronics.

rare tape, issued in 40 copies only "and about MB tape, its originally right channel only recorded stuff (+ low level white noise on left channel). here is a MBs note: "Concerning the description of why only the right channel, Ive only this in memory: I was trying some experiments at my first approach on my new MS20 Korg synthesizer, without any experience on it (because Im not a musician) and I pushed some button by mistake and the sound came out only in a right channel." "The "UNTITLED 1980" t…