★A Silent Place
Live In The House Of God
Recorded in an empty, deconsacrated church sometime in summer 2003, this LP is another installment in an on-going series of records documenting the weird life of Jennifer Gentle in the foggy plains of Northern Italy. Basically the sound of JG's mainman Marco Fasolo going wild with an old, battered electronic piano and a bunch of sound effects, Live at the House of God is a side-long improvisation sharing the same spirit of those 20-minutes keyboard freak-outs Sun Ra used to record in the late Si…
Moon Phantoms
Moon Phantoms is a collaboration between the bands Bardo Pond and Suishou No Fune from Japan. This record came about as most of these collaboration records do by two bands doing a tour together, hitting it off and deciding it would be fun to record a session together. Here's a review I'm stealing from Aquarius Records who always seem to sum up the mood of an album perfectly in just a few sentences: "Deep in the forest ethno-drones, drenched in buzz and shimmer. Sitar, guitar, cumbas and all sor…
Cosmic Debris v. I
CD re-issue of the first instalment in the new "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka MY CAT IS AN ALIEN. This Volume I sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) and his all-star ensemble TEXT OF LIGHT (here featuring Alan Licht, Dj Olive, Ulrich Krieger and Tim Barnes). Their track "033103 Paris" has been recorded live at Cen…
Cosmic Debris, Vol.III
CD re-issue of the 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, …
Aswolf / Solar Anarchy
Pestrepeller join forces with the Opalio Brothers for an incredible limited edition split album; also a picture disc with mind-bending artwork by Pestrepeller's Savage Pencil and My Cat Is An Alien's Robert Opalio. The Pestrepeller side is a twenty-minute psychedelic epic that starts with a journey through a wind tunnel and ends up on the back of a giant churning bass-driven streamroller which flattens all in its path. This sees t…
A Day Without Disaster
A Day Without Disaster is the newest chapter in the musical adventures of Nick Castro & The Young Elders. The group has spent the last year recording and touring the world while honing their skills both in the studio and on stage. This EP, on Italian label A Silent Place, is a glimpse into the ever-evolving minds of NC & The Young Elders, which are dwelling somewhere between the romantic male/female duets of Richard & Linda Thompson and the exotic worldly arrangements of the Incredible String Ba…
Leaves Under Trees (Portayed Window)
Limited ART Edition of 100 copies only, for this one-sided vinyl LP, coming in a silk-screened folded cover, including an exclusive hand-made painting made by Texan artist Niwi (alias Vanessa Rossetto - www.pervertedlogic.com/niwi/). Every single artwork is an original card-panel of cm. 28 x cm. 21,50, signed and numbered by the artist and completely different by any other!
Autumn Testament
Comprised of Brad Rose (The North Sea) and Keith Wood (Hush Arbors), The Golden Oaks features road show magicians springing forth candles from wooded sanctuaries. Composed via the postal system, Autumn Testament is a hymn to the season of red, gold, and orange. A canopyn of leaves shelters the proceedings from the fog that threatens to obscure these sounds. This is a glorious combination of organic grace, blessed by the forests of past centuries and those still in their infant stages. The trees …
Praxinoscope
Praxinoscope is a new project which sees the duo Roberto Opalio (one-half of My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (close collaborator of the Italian space-brothers). While in the debut album as Painting Petals On Planet Ghost (out in early September 2005 on Time-Lag Records) Ramona will focus on her Japanese vocals alongside both brothers' acoustic tunes, here she plays little Japanese percussions and wind chimes, creating a resonant texture over Roberto's alien wordless vocals and space elect…
We Slowly Lift Ourselves From Dust
This is a set of 28 minutes of new music by Fear Falls Burning for the Italian A Silent Place label. Per side Fear Falls Burning explores, as the title would suggest, the darker and nihilistic regions of his drone music. Minimal repetitive motives which slowly evolve and expand over the 14 minutes per side into 2 unsettling harmonies of minor and solitude. All performed live and recorded directly onto hard disc, there's no editing involved in order to maintain the spontaneous interaction of the …
What Is Here For?
Limited Edition of 515 copies. First 110 copies released as coloured (brown) vinyl. Including a small insert. Contains two long and deep duo cuts of univibe-era lap steel/ electronic tone generator improvisation, one side recorded live and stamped w/ the indelible mark (ie, the #15 bus rumbling by) of Bullbabe Studios, Austin TX (the odor of sweat, lone star, and barbeque is palpable). The sounds: monolithic serenity infused with a deep breath from the void, as peaceful and violent as a mountain…
Black Magic Disco
Black Magic Disco is the new all-star band featuring Tom Greenwood (Jackie-O Motherfucker), Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Praxinoscope). The project was born out of an idea from Tom Greenwood, founder leader of the avant-folk-blues ensemble Jackie-O Motherfucker, who invited Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka the Italian improv duo My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA), and their close collaborator Ramona Ponzini (also involved with the tw…
Muddy speaking Ghosts through my Machines
Muddy Speaking Ghosts Through My Machines' is the brand new album released together by Fabio Orsi and Gianluca Becuzzi. This album will be certainly followed by other cooperations, considering the big friendly artistic sodality between them. Fabio e Gianluca are a strange duo, considering the big differences of their artistic back-ground. Fabio Orsi is a young and unexpected talent. After his first album, "Osci" (LP, SmallVoices 2005), produced by Gianluca Becuzzi, he got a lot of positive feedb…
The Last Night Of The Angel Of Glass, Vol. I & II
Double CD set reissuing the acclaimed "The last night of the Angel of Glass, Vol.I", original soundtrack to the omonimous film by Roberto Opalio (released on the long-out-of-print DVD-R/CD-R set by Foxglove, USA), plus the totally previously unreleased "Vol.II" (entire disc 2), representing the second half of a unique recording session. The work here available for the first time in its entire and remastered version was recorded by the artist himself at home in Torino, Italy, on November 1st 2005…
Different Shades Of Blue
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 …
Fallen Camellias
Second full-lenght album from Italy's Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, aka brothers Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and vocalist Ramona Ponzini (also involved in the duo Praxinoscope, as well as a new project with Z'EV). 'Fallen Camellias' is a tribute to one of the greatest poetess ever, Japanese Yosano Akiko, whose work in literature in the early 1900's is considered as manifesto of the Japanese Romanticism. Imagine a Vashti Bunyan or a early Marianne Faithful singing sweet melo…
Cosmic Debris Volume II
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…
From The Earth To The Spheres Vol. 6
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…
The Sea swells a bit...
Aidan Baker is one of the most important emergent artist of the last years...! Probably this is the most important "musical" Aidan Baker release..., in fact here the sound is comparable to the best (obscure) psychedelic post-rock releases including great droning, hypnotic and honeiric atmospheres. Spontaneously composed by Aidan, who plays guitar (electric & acoustic), bass, tapeloops, drum machine and percussion in his droning 'fashion soup'. In this album Aidan uses (as usual) his guitar but a…
Ankoku
Ramona Ponzini's personal touch is certainly her own particular Japanese chant, together with the use of traditional percussions, bells and cymbals from Japan. Z'EV has been enchanted by all those elements (listening to Praxinoscope), asking to Ramona for this cooperation. This is the result of this "long-distance encounter". ANKOKU is a Japanese word which means "deep darkness". For this debut Ramona's voice and percussions has been registered by My Cat is an Alien in their mysterious studio, …