After a two year wait - building on the back of their two previous LPs by Omega Mai and Giovanni Di Domenico - the relatively new Holidays Records subimprint, Castel Sotterra, returns with two new deep dives into the archives of sessions recorded at Outside Inside Studio in the Montello hills in northern Italy, “Bordin / Di Domenico / Marogna” by the trio of Matt Bordin, Giovanni Di Domenico, and Riccardo Marogna, and “Smiles” by experimental psyche journeymen Jackie-O Motherfucker. Recorded in 2021 and 2014 respectively, each is a mind-expanding exploration at the outer edges of free improvisation, that locks the ear into rhapsodies of immersive and intoxicating sounds that can't be shaken once heard.

Since their founding during the early years of the new millennium, the Italian imprint, Holidays Records, has stood at the vanguard of forward-thinking sound, building a carefully curated catalog of releases that collectively build context and conversation across numerous avenues of exploration - placing the contemporary and historical side by side - within the wider field of experimental and improvised music. Back in late 2021, Holidays pushed ever further into this venerable ground with the launch of their latest venture, Castel Sotterra, in collaboration with Matteo Bordin from Squadra Omega. Working from an archive of live, free improvised sessions recorded at Outside Inside Studio, located in the Montello hills in northern Italy, the imprint’s first two releases, Omega Mai’s “Omega Mai” and Giovanni Di Domenico’s “Nero Assoluto”, totally blew us away and left us hanging on bated breath.

In the midst of a remarkably prolific run, Giovanni Di Domenico needs little introduction to SoundOhm’s readers. We’ve written about him again and again. Over the last 2 decades, the Italian, Brussels based composer has carved a deep path through a diverse number of discrete fields within experimental music - bridging improvised music and advanced forms of electroacoustic music - while working in various ensembles - Abschattungen, AufHeben, Bonjintan, Cement Shoes, Delivery Health, etc - as well as producing a discography of critically heralded solo efforts, and intimate collaborations with Jim O'Rourke, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Akira Sakata, Arve Henriksen, Alexandra Grimal, Nate Wooley, Chris Corsano, and others.

Matt Bordin and Riccardo Marogna, on the other hand, are slightly less well known, having primarily worked within bands, carving a singular path through the Italian underground for years. Both are members of Squadra Omega, an Italian collective of musicians devoted to free improvisation and psychedelic jams, who employ an open line-up that changes on nearly everything they produce (so far 9 full lengths and a handful of EPs for labels like Holidays,      Soave, and Macina Dischi). Closely aligned with the Outside Inside Studio, from the archives of which Castel Sotterra draws its material, it’s a wonderful surprise to find them locked in close musical dialog with Giovanni Di Domenico, who has worked within adjacent contexts to them for years.

“Bordin / Di Domenico / Marogna” was recorded on September 6, 2021 at Outside Inside Studio, Volpago del Montello. Encountering Giovanni Di Domenico playing electric and acoustic piano, electronics, and percussion; Riccardo Marogna playing tenor saxophone, clarinet, live electronics, and percussion; and Matt Bordin on tape loops, synth, electronics, lap steel guitar, soprano sax, and percussions, the album is a thrilling excursion in contemporary improvisation that falls slightly outside of the aesthetic perimeters associated with that term. Comprising two side-long tracks, the album begins at a masked distance from where it eventually arrives, unspooling dreamy ambient expanses that are slowly infiltrated by rattling percussion, bent synth lines, and textural electronics, before being blissfully guided into narcotic realms by droning reeds and punctuations of tone and culminating as an unexpected middle-ground between new age and free improv. The second side, occupied with a similarly untitled work, utilizes roughly the same sonorous sources as its predecessor, but departs into markedly more atonal and explicitly experimental realms. Constructed upon a bedrock of shifting drones, the trio pushes hard before breaking down into states of distant abstraction under the guidance of Di Domenico’s deconstructed piano lines and a heady mix of processes that dances amidst pulsing textures and fragments of tone.

Unexpected and startling to points that keep you on the edge of your seat from its first soundings to the last, the trio have proven themselves to be a force to be reckoned with - redefining the expectations of purely improvised music in deftly subtle ways - across their debut LP as a trio. We can only hope that this isn’t a one off and they get back to it again.

Founded in Portland, Oregon in 1994, and coming to prominence during the latter half of the decade and first part of the 2000s within a new outgrowth of American experimentalists like Tower Recordings, Charalambides, No Neck Blues Band, Six Organs Of Admittance, Pelt, Hall Of Fame, and others, Jackie-O Motherfucker began as the duo of the multi-instrumentalist Tom Greenwood and saxophonist Nester Bucket. For nearly thirty years the group - drawing upon everything from free improvisation, numerous folk idioms, to field recordings, psychedelia, drone, and noise - has remained a shapeshifting force in the underground scene, taking on and shedding more than forty members and collaborators over those years, largely under the guidance of Greenwood at the helm.

Recorded live on April 28, 2014 at Outside Inside Studio, Montebelluna, “Smiles” encounters Jackie-O Motherfucker working with the line-up of Alan Zignoto on bass; Dave Easlick on drums; Tom Greenwood on guitar and vocals; Jeffrey Alexander on synth and chalumeau; Michael Whittaker on saxophone, flute, and trombone; and Dave Siebert on violin and lap steel. Originally released as a small and now virtually unobtainable cassette edition in 2015 by Pome Pome Tones, Castel Sotterra’s first ever vinyl pressing - issuing even more of those sessions than the original release across a double LP - is incredibly welcome, making these stellar recordings accessible for the first time in years, and some for the first time ever.

Possibly drawing on the sessions in a more accurate way, Castel Sotterra’s edition of “Smiles” progresses in roughly the same way as the cassette before breaking off midway through what was the tape’s second side - the sidelong piece “The Corner” - and splicing in a previously unreleased piece as the vinyl edition’s third side, before concluding with the second half of the tape’s “The Corner”. As such, we encounter a great deal more of the breadth and range that the band is capable of. Beginning with the side-long piece “La Cosa” the band embarks into their signature territory of droning folk infused free improvisation, writhing and twisting towards ecstatic highs and restrained minimal moments, painting an alternate image of the Third Ear Band on very different drugs.

The album’s second side departs into markedly more aggressive and electrified territory, bleeding hard psyche with elements of free jazz and drone, and as such flirting with the aesthetics of bands like Parson Sound, pushed toward outer space. The album’s third piece returns to a softer and more gentle palette, spinning its rambling excursions from a spine of loose acoustic guitar before slowly moving toward states of hypnotic obstruction with expanded instrumentation and drifting sax lines, before concluding on the fourth and final side which seethes with drivingly repetitive krautrock infused rock and roll.

Recorded in roughly the same moment and using the same line up as 2014’s “House Of Rain”, the entire length of “Smiles” further unlocks Jackie-O Motherfucker at one of the band’s great creative highpoints and reminds us of what a force they are. Truly amazing sounds from the heart of the American underground, captured in Italy during the Spring of 2014, it’s just about as killer and intoxicating as music comes.