The Wire
Italy’s Maurizio Bianchi is one of the more intriguing figures to have emerged from the post-Industrial culture of the early 1980s. During that period, Bianchi self-published a considerable amount of material on vinyl and cassette. At once intensely focused and kaleidoscopically freeform, his work splatters the stereo field with meandering patterns of synthetic tones and electronic rhythms laced with existentially grim metaphors of carcinogens, genocide, and sexual depravity.Bianchi’s work attained a wider audience when he agreed to have Whitehouse’s William Bennett publish several of his recordings on his Come Organisation label in 1982. He continued to record at a feverish pace until 1984 when he abruptly stopped making music, having become a Jehovah’s Witness. Some 15 years later, Bianchi began composing again, often returning to the height of his electronic prowess but occasionally detouring into tedious New Ageisms.
Archives represents another reissue campaign of Bianchi’s early works, after the ten discs released on the Ees’t label in the ‘90s. It focuses on the vast amount of material found on his early cassettes. In many ways, the MB cassettes were a means for Bianchi to experiment with ‘neutronik’ technologies (synthesizer, effects and rudimentary tape manipulation). In contrast with the strength of material composed for vinyl, the cassette releases are a mixed bag, which in turn make this set of recordings, digitally remastered for the occasion, a spotty but ultimately fascinating collection.
1980s Com.SA and Computer.S.p.A. are early manifestations of the MB ethos, where Bianchi recontextualises the psychedelic electronics of Kluster and Conrad Schnitzler into a dehumanising theatre of turmoil, claustrophobia and horror. He builds densely stratified layers of high frequency oscillations, grim textural vibrations and electric turbulence, which blossom upon the tapestry of a macabre grey slab with deadly force and a violence that becomes curiously seductive.
Other entries don’t fare as well. On 1981s Voyeur Tape and Cold Tape, Bianchi employs concrete techniques as his sole compositional tool - indiscriminate surges of energy were Bianchi’s way of establishing droning, trance-inducing environments, into which he injected bleak metaphors. However, his murky varispeed warblings and dull tape loops do little more than reflect the process of how such sounds were composed. Bianchi fumbles with his synthesizer, unable to produce the catastrophic effects found elsewhere in thes box.
The aptly-named Noise-O-Rama is a good example of Bianchi’s sonic extremity. Originally a 90 minute cassette that spliced together a collage of MB tracks that had appeared on various mail art and noise compilations, this is an overload of shivering electronics smothered by leaden gas and occasionally punctured by searing shards of white noise. Symphony For A Genocide is a nightmarish mix of Forbidden Planet electronics and industrialised paranoia, and represents Bianchi at his best. A continuous convulsion of negative energy, it’s a black monolith of cold black noise.
Such death factory allegories may locate MB’s recordings firmly in the aftermath of Industrial culture; but even with the shortcomings of a few of these recordings, the Archives set holds up extremely well in comparison to the current roster of feral ur-drone psychotics: Skaters, Birchville Cat Motel, Double Leopards and the like.
Jim Haynes, The Wire
