MARIBOR

Maribor is a throbbing-post-nuclear noisy drone super project founded years ago by Stefano Gentile with the contribution of highly acclaimed artists from the Italian underground industrial movement (Maurizio Bianchi/M.B., Mauthausen Orchestra/Pierpaolo Zoppo, Nimh/Giuseppe Verticchio, Andrea Marutti and Gianluca Favaron).

De Immenso is their second offering. This time, the conceptual background seems to be openly related to the universal and philosophical hermeticism of Giordano Bruno, to his dangerous work under the pressure of the hegemonic religious dogma. This album offers to the listener a volcanic and sonorous arcane of bleak crashing noises delicately punctuated by eerie drones and proggy orientated embellishments. This musical procession opens with a dense and buzzing meditative piece covered by hypno-ish circular guitar motives and soft clouds of drones. The second track opens with peaceful repetitive guitar chords, some kind of dreamy tones rapidly followed by an avalanche of field recordings, intrusive black drones. The last minutes contains a dialogue between suspenseful-goth-somnanbulic guitars and rolling crashing noises. Track 3 is a creeped out ambient piece in the pure classy vein of the genre. The last tune is a deep-rumbling heart touching piece mainly built around the guitars and effects.

This album follows the path written by the previous Maribor effort but admits much more variations / solid interferencies between the ambient / noisy facets. A thundering-hauntingly bleak industrial musical adventure that can seduce fans of early demonic drones from Lustmord, Atrax Morgue, Sigilium S but also relaxing post-rockin airs from Jasper TX, Tim Hecker (...)

— First review of this album —

In a super limited edition, Maribor (musical collective featuring one the most radical and notorious figures of the Italian underground school of electronics from the past until now such as Maurizio Bianchi, Giuseppe Verticchio, Andrea Marutti, Pierpaolo Zoppo, Stefano Gentile) released a mesmeric tape highly representative of their unique musical spectrum : admitting variations, multi-directional sides around hyper-moodyesque / creepy tones, deep resonant vibes, abrasive-melancholic guitar phases and bleak abstract noises. This tape features the presence of Gianluca Favaron, permanent member of the neurotic-blackened industrialism Lasik Surgery (with Pierpaolo Zoppo) and of the deep organic ambient Under the snow (with Stefano Gentile). This last provided sound materials, arrangements and sonic experiments of great quality. Contrary to their previous effort Atrocity exhibition, I consider this one as much more cohesive, containing more ambient inflected textures, always blissful / corrosive by nature but much more immediate and directly absorbing. The first piece introduces the listener into a noisy festival of sounds dominated by fuzzed out raw guitars and nervous-ghostly like melodies. Absolute drone-doomy darkness. The second track offers a shimmering assemblage of trancedout-minimal drone textures doubled by some echoing-primal guitar notes, liquid sounds and discreet crushing noises. The ambience is completely and furiously electrostatic, sonic, grimy and otherworldly. A very accomplished effort, a beautifully shadowy drone release that deserves a serious listen before the coming of the new release announced for this year.

"Atrocity Exhibition" is a new project formed by a handful of notorious artists coming from the arena of italian underground experimental music. Conceptually "Atrocity Exhibition" is like a demonic, blasting industrial-sceptical machinery of war which infiltrates the optical-geometrical-metrical territories of life. The music produces magmatic-turbulent electronic stratas, simultaneously trangressive and remarkably abstract. This active process of organised musical chaos is interrupted by unpredictable ecstatic moods. The artists gathered for the occasion work in interdependance. The recognizable original facets of their respective musical signature are intertwined in the process of creation. Giuseppe Verticchio's ethno-ritual music perspectives interact with PierPaolo Zoppo's "Dante-esque" hell-ish bruitist tapestries, Maurizio Bianchi's neurotic minimalism, Andrea Marutti's abyssal blackened ambientscapes and with Stefano Gentile's touching aerial guitar parts. The title track is a majestic-nightmarish soundscape that grows into dark industrial vapours, toxic menacing noises, transfigured by fluidistic emotional e-guitar arpeggios and ghostly resonances. The piece Terrifica Praedicatio is an other tempetuous-power electronic epic admitting heavenly-sacred ethno sounds which can be perceived in a foggy distant atmosphere. The album closes with an exalted-eerie guitar piece covered by charged noisy electronic clouds. To sum up things, Atrocity Exhibition reveals some powerful electronic densities and a raging intensity which seems to restore the self by a cathartical maneuver. The slow moving droning-abrasive electronic textures are constantly in flux, describing the dynamic and paradoxal nature of subjectivty, its potential of disruption and protest against fixed positions and earthly trivialities. This is music as a metaphor, the language of sounds as a mirror of humanity's ineffable experiences. A tremendous-trembling-fluxuous musical voyage.