MATERIALE PER TRE ESECUTORI E NASTRO MAGNETICO

2,5 stars

Dedalus first album already featured experimental moments, but "Materiale per Tre Esecutori e Nastro Magnetico" goes much further in that way and clearly belongs to the avant garde genre, not to the prog or jazzrock world anymore. Expect free jazz and experimentations, with a dissonant saxophone and noises of all sorts. No structure at all, this is to reserve to the (very) open-minded listener.

Tennis shoes inside slippers and boots with diplomas

How old are you? Tanzania! That just goes to show how many children it takes to build 4 Eiffel towers, when you're feeling like a cowboy toast on the rise.

If any of this gibberish makes sense to you, then you should probably take a closer look at Dedalus second album called Materiale Per Tre Esecutori E Nastro Magnetico, which translates into something as mundane and trivial as Material for 3 artists and magnetic tape - whatever that means. Well to take an educated guess, I think this title reflects a band that wanted to take things to the extreme, and here I am talking waaaay out there on a ledge, where only mad musicians like the David Helfgotts and surreal Amadeuses of the world venture, and then perhaps the fact that this release incorporates a fair deal of electronic meandering. -Maybe that is what the magnetic tape means? I am not so sure...

The music on offer here is totally unstructured, or else the crazy three Italians here managed to cook up the most convoluted album I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. It is like walking into a room where the music is so loud and in the middle of everything, that you struggle to make heads or tales of any of it. This is essentially free-jazz. It wobbles along like a confused renegade on acid throwing loose fragments of sound into the air - hoping for it to land on something - anything really. As a result of this, the listener, and here this term is somewhat lacking in meaning, because one really needs to be involved and fighting like one of those turtles that some people from Asia pay big bucks to see fight, - anyway, you really need to be in there with your kamikaze headbands on, swinging your uppercuts and low blows like a regular Mike Tyson of the avant guarde. This music will quite simply drop you like a bad habit, if you don't put up a fight.

It is bizarre worming snuffling electronic beats and cacophonous drumming where cello, piano, Fender piano, accordion, synthesizer, soprano ocarina, electric mandolin, plastubofono, bottle, tenor & soprano saxophone, guitars, harmonica, flute, Moroccan oboe and strange voices coalesce like some kind of unorthodox musical scarecrow made up of a hundred different musical tastes all crammed into one little album.

This is Allen Ginsberg's most out there ramblings put into sounds and noises. It is the soundtrack of going mad inside a carousel that runs on jet fuel. It's like listening to a jazz record from a mental asylum - only backwards, but first and foremost is it a record that only speaks to a small fraction of the adventurous music seekers, which is why I feel 2 stars is the right rating. This is bunkers in so many different ways, that you need to have sown your head on with bubblegum and stardust to fully grasp its full-blown insanity, and then it doesn't even begin to describe how much nonchalance it takes to actually appreciate the overt carelessness of the tracks. Oh yes this music takes prisoners - spits 'em out and goes on like a raving lunatic in cellophane and banana peels. I actually like listening to it when I work out, but I am not so sure what that says about me in the end... Maybe that I am mad enough to actually award it with 3 stars, because of how much unadulterated, inexplicable and unhinged enjoyment I get out of it?

My God... what on earth happened to these guys within a year?

'Materiale Per Tre Esecutori E Nastro Magnetico' is far more avant garde and dissonant than their first album after which their bass player departed. Even so, this sounds like an entirely different band, left with no grounding or clear ideas whatsoever.

Discordant saxophones, mandolins and bottle tops are blown for all they're worth in this hideously tuneless album. I'm always open to something new and unusual, but I have to admit that this is one of the most annoying albums I've heard in a long time.

Sounding nothing like their self titled, wholly acceptable, and occasionally enjoyable debut, this one sucks big style. A rotten way to spend an hour of your time as various acoustic instruments bleat, squawk and stab in the most tuneless of ways reminding me of a paralytically drunk guy staggering down an alleyway before he throws up.

The only comparison I can think on is 'Biota' - but they're far more playful, atmospheric, full of life and enjoyable. Even the unusual' 'Moroccan oboe' doesn't help amongst the sparseness of tune on display in this torturous recording.

'La bergera - con più frequenza - accordanza ' (What a mouthful!) is probably the best of the lot simply because I'm safe in the knowledge that it's all gong to end shortly. My hopes were so high coming into this through it being included on the 'Nurse With Wound' list, but I have to say, they were well and truly dashed with the ineptitude on display.

Well one thing is for sure. DEDALUS showed on their debut album that they were certainly open-minded and willing to take risks and experiment but absolutely no one, especially the jazz-rock-fusion fans of their debut could have seen this one coming. For some reason, DEDALUS decided it was time to move on after one album of primo jazz-fusion workouts and go to even stranger pastures. In this case they took on a real career killer and tackled musique concrète and pointillistic surrealism. The result is an album that gets almost universally panned for it sounds absolutely nothing like the debut and i can only imagine how many jazz-fusion lovers over the years have fallen for the debut only to scratch their heads after listening to this one!

Part of the situation was that the bassist Furio De Castri parted ways after the debut. Instead of the sensible decision of replacing him, the remaining four members decided to let their freak flag unfurl full staff and really go for it in the experimental department which pretty much destroyed all momentum they had built and pretty much ended their musical credibility. Instead of syncopated jazz rhythms mixed with solo tradeoffs and spaced out freak outs, we get a series of clanging cans, breaking bottles, piano sweeps and various other noises such as cats meowing, operatic meanderings and whacked out outbursts. There are still traces of jazz here and there with drum rolls, sax runs and even violins but they appear sporadically. There are also scant outbursts of melodies that are fleeting but nonetheless present themselves.

For anyone to enjoy this they must really have had some exposure to some of the avant- garde music of the 50s and 60s. There reminds me a lot of John Cage and his surrealist musical vision and the strange musique concrète of Edgar Varèse but most of all i get a Karlheinz Stockhausen vibe whose pointillistic musical impressionism is the main focus here. Like a good impressionalist painter, DEDALUS paints sonic textures with bloops and bleeps and scant traces of an underlying motif. I like to think of this in general as a ride in a canoe with the chaotic swirls and eddys of water that surround the canoe as the main focus that lead to an underlying object but only as indirect evidence that has to be mounted to come to the final conclusion.

Yes, this is ridiculously convoluted and complex and most listeners will not give this the time of day, but i personally find this kind of music stimulating on rare occasions. I think of this as the musical equivalent to those rare nutrients that the body needs like molybdenum that are only needed in the smallest of doses but yet are essential for the overall health of an organism. There is something about listening to this on the rare occasion that is kind of like defragging your computer. It just kind of makes melodic music sound better! Maybe i'm just a disturbed individual for finding any joy in this whatsoever, but being familiar with the avant-garde classical artists that preceded has aided in my understanding. Admittedly, WTF were these guys thinking?!!! This pretty much ended a promising career and they should have at least put out a couple more stellar jazz-fusion releases before doing anything this alienating to their fans.

As a litmus test you can ask yourself if you can tolerate Area's "Caos" from Maledetti and if the answer is yes, then you can take that track and make a whole album out of it and it will give you a hint of what's going on here. I certainly wouldn't call this essential but this certainly is more than random noise going on. Like the invisible canoe on the flowing stream that creates wakes and hydrologic distortions, this music is the impression of an underlying unheard musical structure that demands your full attention and multiple listens to discern. There are occasional classical motifs that just briefly bubble up from the underworld. This album is tacked on to the end of remastered versions of the debut album. It may not be essential but is well worth it if it's a freebie and can satisfy one's utmost strangest musical urges when the mood hits, at least it does for yours truly.

Dedalus' self-titled debut is one of the finest examples of jazz rock of the 1970's. Their follow up, "Materiale Per Tre Esecutori E Nastro Magnetico," however, is something all together different. Gone is any sense of structure, groove, or melody. This is pure avant-garde jazz to be sure. Random noodling and noises rule on this release, and there is no relief throughout. My guess is that the band's presumed drug use, which allowed for the creation of their magnificent debut, began to get out of control and the experimentation went a bit too far on "Materiale Per Tre Esecutori E Nastro Magnetico." I do have a taste for music that's off the beaten path, but this one is too much for me. I'm sure there are some people out there that might find this interesting, and the band is made up of very talented musicians, so I'll give this one 2 stars.