Italian Noise Circa Now
Piedmont, as I've recently learned, is one of the twenty regions of Italy, far up in the northwestern reaches of the country, nestled in between France and Switzerland. The name comes from the medieval Latin
a pedem montium, literally "at the foot of the mountains", and that's no joke—the Alps surround the region on three sides. Maybe it's the majestic landscape that inspires people in this area to create such goddamn phenomenal music.
Now, to be clear, I intend to write about amazing, unusual, current Italian music
in general here, and there are some examples from outside of Piedmont. Genoan Godfleshy/prog hybrid band
Vanessa Van Basten would be one of them. Aggro free jazz
Jooklo Duo—who, according to every bit of information I've ever been able to dig up, are simply from "Italy"—might very well be another. I would have assumed initially that a discussion about the cutting-edge music of Italy would focus mostly on that nation's largest city, Rome, but interestingly that isn't quite the case. Not to say there isn't some great stuff coming out of Rome, because there most assuredly is. Take
Zu for example. You've probably heard of them. Instrumental drums/sax/upright bass trio on Ipecac Records who play some kind of John Zorn infused post-punkish hardcore jazz metal. Simply put: they're great. I'm sure you knew that. But did you also know they have a more electronic four piece side project called
Black Engine who are even better? I bet you didn't know that.
Let's talk about Luca T. Mai for a moment. Here is one busy ass musician. Not only is he the stunningly talented saxophone player in Zu, able to make his horn sound like a wall of guitar noise at will; not only does he also record as part of the aforementioned Black Engine; not only is he a talented jazz musician who plays in backing bands for a variety of artists; but he's even able to take time out of his hectic schedule to help string together my fragmented narrative by being the sax player for Piedmont-based oddball grindcore/powerviolence/jazz/experimental band
Psychofagist, who also happen to be one of the greatest bands on earth at the moment. That's a fact.
So now we're back up in Piedmont. At the core of the region's generally noisy and off-kilter music scene there is a record label called Supernatural Cat, founded by the members of the astonishing drone/doom/pychedelic/space rock trio
Ufomammut (check out my review of their album
Idolum here) and Malleus, a visual artists' cooperative that involves some or all of the members of the aforementioned band (see artwork above). On this label are a small number of artists, all of whom are, at the very least, really, really good. At the top of the pile is, of course, Ufomammut and their consistently awesome (to use the word in its original sense) discography. Also worthy of special note is
Morkobot, a bass/bass/drums instrumental trio that is heavy as hell, often groovy as hell, and frankly sounds like no one else I've ever heard in my life. And then there's the hardcore-with-a-slight-dash-of-electropop of
Incoming Cerebral Overdrive, the weirdo minimalistic sludge of
OvO, the one-off experimentalism of
Farwest Zombee and the post-metal/hardcore of
Lento—who are actually from Rome but they recorded a whole album with Ufomammut so we won't hold that against them.
The remainder of the Piedmont music scene outside of the Supernatural Cat roster is made up of a motley array of bands.
Bachi da Pietra is one of the standouts. Featuring Bruno Dorella of OvO, this duo plays a style of subdued, David Lynchian minimalistic rock music that is nevertheless oddly doomy. And speaking of doom, let's not forget
Dead Elephant, whose sprawling art doom compositions occupy a somewhat similar territory to Ufomammut. One other unusual Piedmond group out there who don't really fit in with the rest are
Uochi Toki, a quirky hip hop act that could best be described as the Italian answer to Anticon.
So what's the story with Italy? It's a big country so makes sense that there would be at least some great music there, and of course it's no surprise to hear it coming from the nation's biggest city. But why does such a disproportionate amount come the far-flung and relatively sparsely populated Piedmont region? Maybe it really is a result of the grandeur of that alpine scenery. Maybe it's product of the region being the crossroads of multiple cultures. Or maybe it's just magic.
Yeah, that's it. It's definitely just magic.