El Muniria

Featuring: Massimo Carozzi

* Limited edition of 218 handnumbered copies on dark Red Vinyl *  Tangiers, september 2002. Three italian musicians, after taking the never ending bus route from Bologna, settle in a cheap hotel close to the seafront. They sleep in one room, and set up their recording equipment in the next one. Until about one month earlier, Emidio Clementi was the singer and bass player of Massimo Volume, one of the best and most original bands in the history of italian music. Their four albums of angular post-hardcore/art-rock sounds, with spoken storytelling/poetic lyrics by Clementi, opened an uncharted path in the nation's underground rock. But they had just broke up. Massimo Carozzi would go on to release music on labels such as Yerevan Tapes, Eclipsemusic, Second Sleep, Random Numbers, Cold Tear and Subself, solo or as a member of dub techno duo Weight And Treble. He is also a founding member of artistic collective ZimmerFrei, and has worked for radio, cinema, theatre and dance. But at the time, he's Massimo Volume's former tour manager and he makes music for Clementi's readings, and his career as sound artist and electronic producer is just starting. Dario Parisini played guitar in Massimo Volume's final line-up, and has been both a movie actor of some fame and a founding member of controversial punk/crossover band Disciplinatha, active between 1987 and 1997. 

Work in Morocco doesn't go as planned. When they return home two or three weeks later, Clementi and Carozzi are alone and the record they wanted to make is far from ready. Parisini left, and the pair start bulding the album again in Bologna, with the help of some friends: Giacomo Fiorenza, who co-produces and plays amazing vintage keayboards throughout the record; Steve Piccolo of New York's Lounge Lizards), who sings and plays guitar and harmonica; Mauro Rigoni of italian avantgarde noise giants Starfuckers; Francesco Donadello, then drummer for Giardini di Mirò, now an acclaimed sound engineer; and Vittoria Burattini, Massimo Volume's extraordinary drummer, on breathtaking closing track Insieme.  Stanza 218 is that album, El~Muniria's only one. Clementi's words are like scenes from a movie, his delivery a calm, disenchanted, feverish murmur. Carozzi's ambient electronics are minimal and entrancing, and aware of what's happening in the world outside, trip hop mostly. Parisini's guitars add perfectly to the narcotic, cinematic flow of the music.  Released on CD only by Homesleep in early 2004, and unavailable since almost then, the album has been remastered for its first ever relase on vinyl by specialist Giuseppe Ielasi. Painter and illustrator Maurizio Lacavalla has taken the original, iconic cover photo by Federico Labanti and painted it, and his amazing art has also been used for the record's back cover and insert.