Nikos Veliotis: cello; Ilios: oscillators; Coti K: double bass; Sakis Tolis: voice in “Hapsía”
When you set the volume at a lower level than usual yet the music escaping from the speakers still puts a room’s looser structures in a clattering condition while drowning the nape of the neck and the chest in an onslaught of subsonic intimidations, that’s the unequivocal signaling of Mohammad being back in town.
Lamnè Gastama – the second part of an ongoing trilogy – is definitely less forgiving than its preceding chapter Zo Rèl Do. There is not too much happening in terms of “hummable” lines, but this is not a surprise. Stretched patterns and sequences of rather basic intervals – preferably of the dissonant species – get electrocuted inside sonic ranges whose tints vary from “devilish bereavement” to “rotten cadaver skin”. The fighting partials convert a theoretical acoustic contradictoriness into a brain-rejuvenating dogma.
The impression is that of sitting near a nervously complaining volcano with a metal sheet factory in full activity on the other side of a hypothetical route. The instrumental gradations are harsh to the point of a convulsive dissolution, excoriating tones hurting, shivering and commixing to elicit visceral responses. For the first time in the trio’s continuum a vocal component appears: in “Hapsía”, Sakis Tolis’ sinister wheezing becomes worse – picture a cross between degenerate versions of Lustmord and Thierry Zaboitzeff – as soon as the drones explode around him.
The longest track – “Tik Tromakton” – cancels once and for all the vacuous illusions given by low-frequency palliatives of the third kind, sealing and stamping the only officially sanctioned method to deliver yourselves from undesired guests when deemed opportune. Spare me from the “play loud” suggestion, too, for I do care about my reader’s safety: with this stuff woofers, window panes and weak nerves could get shattered if you turn that knob clockwise too eagerly.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 