NINNI MORGIA & MARCELLO MAGLIOCCHI – Season Two

Solar Ipse Audio House

Second outing by the Morgia / Magliocchi duo after Sound Gates on Ultramarine (unheard here). Eight tracks, 38 minutes total, a warts-and-all kind of recording corresponding to a bootleg of relatively fine quality, which in a way enhances the quest for extremist attributes in the sonority at large. Morgia’s impurity on the guitar is expressed with a constant flow of mutating unkindness: grating strings, picks slicing pickups, vibrato bar abused more than caressed, feedback bent to the wishes of the gods of noise. Magliocchi interacts with drums and self-built percussion, apparently contradicting the partner’s directions but in reality finding ways to settle matters via aluminous pictures, toy xylophone-like micro-patterns and snappish bursts. When a compromise isn’t reached a measure of mayhem arises, and we’re reminded of realities whose place is halfway through Shamballa (William Hooker & Thurston Moore) and Best Laid Plans (David Torn & Geoffrey Gordon). Not a masterpiece, despite the Hendrix + Sharrock + Haino comparison of the press release – Italy is second to none when over-hype is necessary – but definitely a record that transmits energies dictated by a full-blooded animation. Still, the mix’s insufficient sharpness reduces the opportunities of appreciating details that in all likelihood would increase the performance’s apparent worth.