Zarko

Black Rubber Exotica – Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte (2004)


GENRES – Electronic, Experimental, Jazz

Sexxxy – 5:27
Via Veneto Strip Tease – 3:42
She Stirs My Cocktail – 3:40
Katia (Piazzola Di Vicchio) – 3:13
Hot Heels – 3:27
From Las Vegas To Hell – 6:45
Black Rubber Exotica – 4:12
Black Dalia – 5:23
Martini Girl – 4:27
Deathorama – 5:59
Miss Exotique Tana Luise – 4:26
My Sweet Betty – 2:45
Mature Is Better – 3:39
Dancing Mistress – 4:30
Adesso È Buio – 7:22

Sometimes I really don’t know why I bother with some of these albums… I know that 99.9% of Music Banter will hate them, so it all seems a bit pointless. To make it blunt, this is the ‘snuff film’ of my music collection. It isn’t just random samples of people having sex, but the subject matter, the sounds; it just fits into that category. I have introduced many of you to Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte before, through the compilation where I submitted a soft tune of theirs. A few of you liked it; however, this is the polar opposite of that song. That was simply darker neoclassical, this is depraved electronics and jazz to the fullest extent. I don’t even know if I like the bloody thing after 5-6 listens, it’s just that sort of album I guess.

The album opens with ‘Sexxxy’, which warily begins with what sounds like glasses being *****ed together and some background light electronics, as we enter the dark and seedy underground. The tone is set, as we are in this world by our own freewill, thinking we fully understanding the nature of this place before it hits us like a brick wall. This brick wall is of course made up of power electronic sounds, as sonic pulses and waves of feedback attack the senses. There is no leeway, and the once ‘pleasant’ backing noise is a distorted mutation of itself. A heavily distorted voice enters the scene, so ****ed up that we can’t understand what it is saying to us, but it is carrying a sinister, maniacal quality.

‘Via Veneto Strip Tease’ captures the sound of feedback, a female screaming and what sounds like a pounding, and turns these sinister sound into an almost ‘sinister latin’ drum beat. It’s almost scary as the drum beats, which are construed as fun is made to symbolise violence with the female screaming continuing. It is again covered in power electronic sounds; however they are much ‘quieter’, and is accompanied with a sordid vocalist whom turns into some odd preacher. ‘She Stirs My Cocktail’ is the introduction to the jazz I suggested was on the album. To match the tone, the group resembles the tine jazz quartet, packed into a corner, pretty much playing to themselves as everyone else is preoccupied. They play a smooth-swing jazz in a smoke packed area with poor instruments, microphones and amps, the whole lot. The melancholic vocals return from the previous two tracks but they carry a more miserable hatred rather than a maniacal feature.

‘Katia’ picks up the pace quite quickly, which is an odd turnaround for the album on the whole. The piece is constructed by electronics and some xylophone sounding work, and to me it represents the increase in blood pressure and the speed of the heart when you lay your eyes on a beautiful woman. It almost makes you forget the squalid world that is present in every other song on the album, and it is almost ingenious the way he has implemented this feeling before we are interrupted again by the dirty underbelly. ‘Hot Heels’ carries a jazz-pop sound, and reminds me of the film noir down tempo jazz from the 40’s and 50’s. The piece is driven by a monotonous drum line with some obvious but not prominent brass instrumentation. This song is almost the ‘coming down’ period after the voracious highs experienced in the last track. For a while it is the ‘purest’ sounding track on the album, before the polluted electronics send off the song.

‘From Las Vegas To Hell’ offers exactly what the name suggests. Entering the intensity of ‘The Strip’, with colours, lights and sounds attacking you from all sides, only send it down to hell for a bit, and notch up the noise elements ten fold. It sometimes feels like you are getting accustomed to the hostility, but when you lull into a sense of security, it hits you again. The title track, ‘Black Rubber Exotica’ is full of the seedy jazz you would expect from such a world. It just carries that suggestive, lustful tone that I guess the title points to.

‘Black Dalia’ draws upon its name sake (The murders obviously) with a deep and down tempo resentment, as the early parts are dominated by some whispering and the intense screech of a rusty gate closing. The pulsating waves continue to increase in volume as some jazzy elements enter the piece. It is almost daunting, listening to the depressing jazz, as if someone’s murder is their fate, and they cannot avoid it. It is best described funeral jazz/electronic before the actual death. ‘Martini Girl’ is another weird amalgamation of styles, as a drawl New Orleans Jazz sound is mixed with jazz-lounge/smoking room vocals and electronic elements. The vocals are as seedy as ever, as the lyrics revolve around ‘owning’ your woman, to the point where it almost becomes a nonchalant bragging game between mates.

‘Deathorama’ is a pretty simple piece, consisting only of a small and repetitive drumming line as some overlaid electronics that initially sounds like horns from a ship, until their repetitive nature almost turns it into a very intense clock chiming. Unfortunately, it is the first song I felt ‘bored with’ across the album so far. Even if I didn’t love earlier tracks I found them quite interesting, but this one was just there. ‘Miss Exotique Tana Luise’ starts out a bit weird, as there is a rapid use of power electronics (Don’t know the name for the specific noise), and it continues on for a good minute before some other electronics and sounds start emanating from below, with some intensely distorted bass drum that interrupt and warps the other sounds. There is a hint of clarinet before it becomes more fluent, with the electronic elements slowly melting away until the clarinet becomes more out standing. It’s an odd track, I am not sure if I like it not either.

‘My Sweet Betty’ is full of an almost lounge jazz chilled nature that is heavily warped by the electronics, before it enters another bout of leisurely New Orleans sound that only gets more and more distorted as the track goes on. I don’t particularly know why, but I loved this track. Maybe it is the way the electronics and the background jazz interact, but the variety created is a treat. It doesn’t change much over time, but it doesn’t need to. It ends with a high frequency looping squeal, which is carried over to the next track, ‘Mature is Better’. The brunt of this track comes with the vocals, which are insanely aggressive along with some extreme electronic distortion. It is probably the one track that made me the most ‘uncomfortable’ with the album.

‘Dancing Mistress’ changes from a random loop to a minimal neoclassical sound, but for a moment I thought it could almost be a slow dancing classical track. However, the combination of sounds quickly overrides this possibility, as the pace and tone is carried over to the final track, ‘Adesso È Buio’, which begins as a random assortment of sounds coming from a fearful female, running away from something. She almost resigns herself to this horrible figure, realising she can never escape as his haunting and echoing voice surrounds everything, as he calls out ‘Adesso È Buio’. More electronics are layered to increase this feeling of being totally enveloped, until only they exist…

I still can’t decide just how much I enjoy this album… Towards the end it probably becomes a little too electronics intense, but this is used in conjunction with the overall change of theme, from sex to murder and death. However, in my opinion the best thing is that even if I didn’t like some aspects of the album, I almost always found it interesting, apart from a track or two. As I said though, most people won’t enjoy this album, and this review probably didn’t give you a good idea of what it is like, but it is different enough and experimental enough to at least be interesting. Also, apologies for the long review, but when something interests me or follows an interesting theme it is generally easier to write about, not to mention the 15 songs.

TOTAL SCORE

7.7/10

– She Stirs My Cocktail
– Black Dalia
– Martini Girl
– My Sweet Betty