ARMAGHEDON

Like most of Maurizio Bianchi's fascinating works, "Armaghedon" is turned to noisy, long minimal sonic dreamscapes, including physical addictive sounds. In this early effort written for a non released experimental movie, Maurizio Bianchi explores sound intensity, somnambulism and "insolit monotony". Try to imagine something between "Phaedra" most intellectual, hallucinatory sequences, the destructive, destructured sounds of Whitehouse and the sacred electronic music of Ramon Sender. The album is divided into two parts, but actually it features one long epic title, starting in an ocean of abstract sounds to finish into madness, acting like a saturation on the neurophysical system (extreme superpositions of noises, linear notes, echoes, collage and deep voices). A real laboratory of dark experimentations, hyper-stimulations of sounds and irregular forms. An incredible musical seance, a must for those who want to experiment extreme sensorial attacks and sonic driving. Amazingly awesome release!!!!

'Armaghedon' sounds remarkably like the original 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. In particular, that part where the girl stumbles into the living room of the psycopaths where she is surrounded by bones, skulls and feathers. 'Armaghedon' is a bit smoother round the edges simply because the recording technology is poorer. This only adds to the sense of dread and ominousness. It's almost like it could have been recorded 100 years ago.

Once again Maurizio Bianchi is entirely electronic and squeezes and squashes all sounds through various delay and echo filters creating a terrifying atmosphere if listened to with the lights off. There are some faint semblances of voice on part two but they're so distorted they're almost unrecognisable as emanating from a human larynx.

'Armaghedon' may remind listeners of the old early 80's video nasty soundtracks too. It's a dirty, malignant sound, very much of its time.

Despite being his umpteenth album (and his last for eight years), the quality hasn't really improved in terms of sound. It's all muffled and distorted beyond distinction using his well worn analogue keyboards.

I've got a lot of time for albums like this. 'Armaghedon' is murder music - the kind of stuff you could imagine Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer listening to whilst trying to lighten up their evenings off.