MAUTHAUSEN ORCHESTRA - Mafarka . LP

"Mafarka" is the first title in a series of vinyl reissues dedicated to Mauthausen Orchestra that Officina Fonografica Italiana is going to release in the next months. An historic project conducted by Pierpaolo Zoppo, Mauthausen Orchestra is - along with Maurizio Bianchi - the name that best marked out the Italian way to Power-Electronics in the early 80s, producing a considerable amount of publications between 1982 and 1986 whose extreme nature had rarely appeared before in music. Distortions and saturations are the backbone of the language used by Mauthausen Orchestra, a project that while showing affinity with MB, Whitehouse and Ramleh, still keeps a definite and recognizable identity, regarding both attitude and content. In "Mafarka," originally published in 1984 on cassette, devastating and abrasive sounds build a lucid madness that goes straight to the heart of the listenere with cruel and terrifying dissonances. The ambiguous charm of discomfort and the seductive decadence of bleak existential scenarios, the lucid exploration of the innermost and hidden dephts of the human mind, the intimate meaning of life on the border of the abyss of death are portrayed in two long tracks where individuality vanishes in an irreversible and definitive sense of absoluteness. (Soundohm)