Mai Mai Mai - Nel sud
| Artist: | Mai Mai Mai |
| Rating: | |
| Genres: | Death Industrial, Post-Industrial, Power Noise Drone, Field Recording, Glitch, Musique concrète |
| Released: | 2019 |
| Type: | Album |
| Label: | La Tempesta International |
| Link: | Bandcamp |
A record inspired by Mediterranean history & Italian ethnographic films...
In his formative years Toni Cutrone aka Mai Mai Mai travelled around Europe and the Near East with his parents, ending up in the south of Italy. Throughout this period Cutrone assimilated the different cultures, atmospheres and sonorities of the places he was involuntarily taken to. The sensations and sounds he experienced during this time were intense enough to leave indelible traces on the music he has made since. Yet Cutrone’s longstanding and considerable experience in the Italian underground has inevitably played a significant role too.
Every one of Cutrone’s releases as Mai Mai Mai have so far been named after characters drawn from the Greek alphabet, beginning with Theta (Boring Machines, 2013) and followed by Δέλτα (Delta) (Yerevan Tapes, 2014) and Φ (Phi) (Not Not Fun Records / Boring Machines, 2017) With each of these projects – subsequently anthologized as the ‘Mediterranean trilogy’ - Roman noise maven Cutrone has unloaded a venomous, punishing and miasmic electronic music, one that reached a climax of vivid, interzonal synthesis and scorched ritual on the trilogy’s final instalment Φ.
The new LP by Mai Mai Mai, titled Nel Sud, continues to explore Mediterranean history yet does so with a different sense of ambition. A journey into the past of the Italian south, realized through original footage taken from Italian ethno-documentaries made during the 1960s and 70s, Nel Sud is intended as an original soundtrack and is mixed with sounds from the original films.
In the A/V performances of Nel Sud, the cinematic output of directors such as Luigi Di Gianni, Gianfranco Mingozzi, Vittorio De Seta and Cecilia Mangini are edited and manipulated in real time by the video artist Simne Donadni, and set to Mai Mai Mai’s heavy and hypnotic sound signature. Profoundly evocative of the Mezzogiorno d'Italia (Southern Italy), Nel Sud explores manifold themes associated with the films and the region; the interrelation between pagan rituals and Catholicism, lives shaped by arduous labour and working-class dignity, the fragility of man subdued by nature, divinity and magic.
released May 24, 2019
In his formative years Toni Cutrone aka Mai Mai Mai travelled around Europe and the Near East with his parents, ending up in the south of Italy. Throughout this period Cutrone assimilated the different cultures, atmospheres and sonorities of the places he was involuntarily taken to. The sensations and sounds he experienced during this time were intense enough to leave indelible traces on the music he has made since. Yet Cutrone’s longstanding and considerable experience in the Italian underground has inevitably played a significant role too.
Every one of Cutrone’s releases as Mai Mai Mai have so far been named after characters drawn from the Greek alphabet, beginning with Theta (Boring Machines, 2013) and followed by Δέλτα (Delta) (Yerevan Tapes, 2014) and Φ (Phi) (Not Not Fun Records / Boring Machines, 2017) With each of these projects – subsequently anthologized as the ‘Mediterranean trilogy’ - Roman noise maven Cutrone has unloaded a venomous, punishing and miasmic electronic music, one that reached a climax of vivid, interzonal synthesis and scorched ritual on the trilogy’s final instalment Φ.
The new LP by Mai Mai Mai, titled Nel Sud, continues to explore Mediterranean history yet does so with a different sense of ambition. A journey into the past of the Italian south, realized through original footage taken from Italian ethno-documentaries made during the 1960s and 70s, Nel Sud is intended as an original soundtrack and is mixed with sounds from the original films.
In the A/V performances of Nel Sud, the cinematic output of directors such as Luigi Di Gianni, Gianfranco Mingozzi, Vittorio De Seta and Cecilia Mangini are edited and manipulated in real time by the video artist Simne Donadni, and set to Mai Mai Mai’s heavy and hypnotic sound signature. Profoundly evocative of the Mezzogiorno d'Italia (Southern Italy), Nel Sud explores manifold themes associated with the films and the region; the interrelation between pagan rituals and Catholicism, lives shaped by arduous labour and working-class dignity, the fragility of man subdued by nature, divinity and magic.
released May 24, 2019
Editions:
2019
Original Release
La Tempesta International
| LTI-068/19
| Digital/Vinyl
| 01. | Il male (di san Donato) | (5:23) | |
| 02. | Tarantula | (8:31) | |
| 03. | Pisci spata | (3:34) | |
| 04. | Magia lucana | (5:45) | |
| 05. | Il pianto | (11:38) |