FAKE

Outopsya began life in Trento in 2003 on the initiative of Luca Vianini and Evan Mazzucchi and other musicians helped them along the years. The name of the band is an acronym for OUT Of PSYchical Activity and the aim of the musicians involved in this project is to blend jazz, classical music, metal and progressive rock with electronic sounds. After a debut album titled 'Sum' (Videoradio, 2009), in 2011 they released a double album on the independent label Lizard Records, 'Fake', a complex work that was conceived as a soundtrack for an old American silent horror film directed in 1925 by Rupert Julian, The Phantom of the Opera, based on a famous novel by Gaston Leroux and starring, among others, Lon Chaney. On account of copyright issues, the band couldn't release the album with a packaging featuring a DVD with the film to combine music and images, so the they turned it into something different, adding some vocal parts with English lyrics to make it more acceptable as an autonomous work.

Outopsya's current line up features only Luca Vianini (guitars, vocals, synthesizers, drums) who wrote the music and lyrics and Evan Mazzucchi (bass, cello) who took charge of the art- work and design: the only 'guest musician' here is a computer. According to an interview with the duo, they chose the title 'Fake' to underline the dichotomy between what is false and what is true in the real life. The falsity here is evoked by the electronic sounds of the computers and contrasts with the sounds of the real instruments. The album was conceived as a single long track of more than 90 minutes but to be released on CD it had to be split in two parts. The two parts are characterized by two different colours, violet for the CD1, the most challenging, experimental one and black for CD2 featuring more accessible passages. To be honest, I have to say that without the images some passages lose their evocative strength and risk to seem redundant, boring and to dilute the many brilliant ideas that you can find in this work. Moreover there are no liner notes and the booklet doesn't contain the lyrics (that are almost incomprehensible since the vocal parts are frequently filtered through sound effects und used as an instrument). What to do then? Well, I've found the film on Youtube and I watched it with the music of this album in the background. In this way even the most experimental parts make sense. It did work and I enjoyed both the film and the music!

'Fake' - Outopsya (4/10)

Originally meant to be a tribute soundtrack to the 1926 silent film 'The Phantom of the Opera', Outopsya could not get the rights to feature the film directly in their work, so after a few modifications, the full-length 'Fake' was born. To its credit, 'Fake' would have made for an interesting score to any spooky film. Independently however, Outopsya's second album is an incoherent mess of different styles. There is the occasional glimmer of brilliance, but at a film's length, 'Fake' can become something of a tough egg to crack.

Over two discs' length, Outopsya mish-mash a range of different sounds and styles, occasionally even throwing proper songwriting out the window in order to do so. Among these are The Mars Volta-type psychedelia, electronic noise, industrial, and even a metal riff here and there. The collaboration of Mazzucchi and Vianini is certainly experimental, and this ambition with sound and texture will challenge even a seasoned prog listener. In short spurts, this wanton sonic turbulence is academically interesting, but Outopsya fails on most occasions to bring these interesting idea to fruition. Save for the album's 'epic' highlight 'Lillies', tracks are over long before these ideas are ever fleshed out.

Among the one minute spurts of noise, echo, and strange vocoder vocals, 'Lillies' stands out as being the sole point on 'Fake' where the band takes their penchant for sound experiments and backs it up with an interesting composition. Even here, the band skirts from immediate melody or warm ideas, but the fifteen minute structure allows them to take their industrial soundscape and build it up into something that I may find myself wanting to return to. 'Lillies' indicates to me that Outopsya are very capable of creating some incredible music. Sadly, most of what is heard on 'Fake' feels like a work-in-progress; a demo that has yet to fulfill its potential. It will be interesting to see where Outopsya goes with this very eclectic collection of sounds on their next album. If they manage to find some effective adhesive to merge this mess together, I don't doubt that something great will come out of it.

Italian outfit OUTOPSYA was formed back in 2003, initially as an instrumental trio. Later on the project has been based around Luca Vianini and Evan Mazzucchi, with a computer replacing the third member for live purposes. "Fake" is their second studio production, released by Lizard Records in November 2011.

Italian duo Outopsya have made themselves a very nice double entry with "Fake". And while those who really enjoyed the experimental metal they explored a few years back on "Sum" might be disappointed with this new double CD, those who appreciate a band that ventures fairly well outside of common and expected norms when creating their material should enjoy this double CD. At least if their taste in music encompasses material of an experimental electronic and rock expression both. A compelling, refreshing but also demanding production from this fine band.