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Kommissar Hjuler/Mama Baer/Ninni Morgia/Silvia Kastel
Live At Morden Tower
Necessary document of this inspired team-up that toured the UK last year, with Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer’s tapework, feral sound poetry and performance art married to the outer space improvisations of synth/vocalist Silvia Kastel and guitarist Ninni Morgia. Playing in the tiny historic Morden Tower – home to countless beat and post-beat poetry readings as well as many seminal Industrial performances - the quartet birth a profoundly feral amalgam of body-soundings, de-constructed language, zonked brain-bombing hysteria and weird cosmo jazz that gives way to the kinda refusenik metal meditations of classic No Wave. This is free improvisation well outside the bounds of ‘free improvisation’ with a performance style that has as much to do with Iggy Pop as Henri Chopin. Edition of 100 copies. Recommended. David Keenan / Volcanic Tongue

Gary Smith / Silvia Kastel / Ninni Morgia “BRAND” LP

It’s surely no coincidence that the cover of this new trio record feels like a homage to Ray Russell’s 1969 album Dragon Hill: guitarist Gary Smith was Russell’s replacement in the Bill Fay Group after they cut Time Of The Last Persecution and in many ways – if there’s any tradition that Smith could really be said to come out of – it’s the Ray Russell school of radical six-string re-invention. Unlike many of his improvising contemporaries Smith owes little to Derek Bailey, despite his own conceptions being just as radically disorientating. Early on he developed a form of stereo guitar playing that involved a clean tone, a volume pedal and a pair of amps that married the kinda ferocious sonic reducer style of Pete Cosey with blunt Japanese psych, austere electronic composition and free improvisation, cutting a series of radical solo albums alongside collaborations with the late John Stevens (released by Thurston Moore on his own Ecstatic Peace imprint), Chie Mukai, Masayoshi Urabe, Shoji Hano and more. Since relocating to Italy Smith has hooked up with guitarist Ninni Morgia and synth/vocalist Silvia Kastel. Anyone who saw Morgia and Kastel in action with Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer on their recent tour and on the Two Couples LP will understand the kind of explosive energy the two bring to the table, combining fire music stylings with post-tongue improvisations and alien electronics. The trio hook-up is nothing short of spectacular. Smith has moved even deeper into subtle string tectonics and Kastel wraps her tonsils all the way around them, gargling notes like ball bearings and make stunning use of post-Monk body soundings while Morgia clashes with Smith with clanging subterranean tones and the sound of metal on metal. Indeed, at points it doesn’t sound like a guitar record at all, with the bubbling notes and sudden dead halts feeling more akin to the radical formal violence of 20^th century electronic composition than anything approaching avant rock. But in its refusal of consensual modes it paradoxically feels closer to the post Ray Russell tradition of radically extended six-string technique. A monster recording that would have sat just *there* on the Nurse With Wound list. Edition of 300 copies with a download card. Highly recommended. David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue

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Ninni Morgia - Ladyboy Sonata / CS

Busy, barbed-wire solo outing by this Brooklyn free rock guitarist. His technique is pretty interesting, and this cassette is free from some of the bland overload you generally expect with extended solo improvisations. He does a lot of baffling note suffocation and chocking that ends up being real damn intriguing. And when things do explode they don’t even always sound like guitar. Hep. Byron Coley, The Wire #335, January 2012

Following his duo record with Marcello Magliocchi, here is now a solo cassette by guitarist Ninni Morgia. Like on that LP, Morgia is an improviser, but with a rock(ist) attitude: his music is quite loud, due to the extensive use of sound effects (modulation, distortion), played with objects on the strings with a great sense of energy. Sometimes he takes back what he is doing and gets a bit more quiet, but even then his music remains a razor sharp thing with loud sounds. Quite wild, sometimes reminding me of some Japanese music, such as KK Null or Solmania on ‘Vomit Reflex’. It reminded me of the music of Lukas Simonis, solo and with his various impromptu duos. I can easily imagine a dueling guitar battle between these two. This is some powerful thirty minutes. FdW / Vital Weekly 802

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MARCELLO MAGLIOCCHI - MUSIC FOR SOUNDING SCULPTURES IN TWENTY-THREE MOVEMENTS / CS

Last week we reviewed Marcello Magliocchi’s record with Ninni Morgia, now the same label also releases a solo tape by him. In a tower in Tuscany there are sculptures made by Andrea Dami, made out of various metals such as iron, brass, copper, steel, aluminum along with strings, stones and gongs. I don’t know if their function is to play them as percussion, but Magliocchi did and the result is twenty-three short pieces of percussion music. He explores, I guess, per piece a certain segment of a sculpture or perhaps the whole sculpture before moving onto somewhere else. Its great music, as Magliocchi is quite a gifted player, working with a great sense of sounds and timbre. Very dynamic, fast, slow, high and low pitches. At times ethnical, at times industrial. A bit like the old Harry Bertoia records, but also like Z’EV. Which made me think: maybe Ultramarine could do a whole series of these releases with different percussion players playing the same sculptures? This Magliocchi release would be a fine start. Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly 794

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SILVIA KASTEL - LOVE TAPE / CS

Hot on the heels of her mighty performances on TWO COUPLES (see Address Drudion July 2011CE), comes Silvia Kastel’s hauntingly sexy and eerily disembodied LOVE TAPE cassette album for Ultramarine Records, on which she squeals, cooes, howls, snarls, grunts and yelps through all manner of intriguing analogue-ishness, whilst synthesizers, rough hewn bass and pre-constructed Igjugurjuk jawjaw conspire underneath to create the kind of compelling rudimentary musique concrète that post-punk ensembles such as Factrix regularly stumbled into. Better still, the cassette itself works as an art object of the kind that used only to be the realm of such record labels as Factory, Rough Trade and New York’s ROIR.  Julian Cope

If you liked that album Avey Tare did with Kría Brekkan, consider Silvia Kastel’s “Love Tape” a continuation of the eery, blurry-edged confines of one of the most controversial indie-rock records of all time. But it’s so much more. Much like that Prudence Teacup LP I Cerb’d up but-good last year, Kastel’s brand of lovin’ is distinct enough to exist on its own level, in its own zone, with its own rules and regulations. Every “song” blows in a completely disparate direction, and you never know what’s going to happen. One minute you could be chugging a bottle of liquid audio in a park as mosquitos suck out your essence and a one-man drum circle flips out hand-jamz out back, the next you could be asleep in the bathtub while an odd woman coos into your damp soul. Then it all dribbles down the drain and all we’re left with is that GODDAMN hand-drum, the title screen of Dig Dug, and a half-smoked bowl of salvia. Gumshoe / Tiny Mix Tapes

Love is the central theme on the cassette by Silvia Kastel, which has half the duration of the Magliocchi cassette - thirty minutes. She uses synthesizer, voice, bass, beats and tenori-on. Seven tracks in total of improvised electronic music, with quite a strong emphasis on the use of voice, whispering, howling, moaning - all, I guess, on the subject of love. It has that typical 80s approach to music, that in those days was also found on cassettes. Fine experimentation, sometimes a half baked idea, sometimes too long and just sometimes also spot on. I guess its more the nostalgia for me than the actual content of the release, but I think this release surely has some fine poetic moments. Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly 794

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NINNI MORGIA & MARCELLO MAGLIOCCHI - SOUND GATES LP

This is an absolutely crucial slab of wax from Ultramarine records who have previously put out some astounding efforts from the likes of UK’s Chora and, loopy Deutschlanders, Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer. For this LP Italian guitarist Ninni Morgia has teamed up with fellow Italian percussionist Marcello Magliocchi. Both musicians have been active in the field of improvised music and experimentalism playing with the likes of Evan Parker and Daniel Carter. The LP is housed in a great photo which evokes the fluidity and lyricism of the pair’s approach to performance. This is most definitely a record fit for vinyl; where the active ritual of listening, flipping the wax and hearing every crackle (due to my overused and dusty turntable!) adds to the whole experience.

It is a tireless and difficult job to capture improvised music and create a feeling of endless possibility and live performance that such a method demands. Here all are achieved to vivacious affect. Both musicians assert themselves with strong voices without constricting one another; playing through varying speeds and volumes without arrogance or competition. There is a feeling of innate mutual understanding that can only come when two units are connected with both knowledge and a shared creative consciousness. Often the record remains as if teetered on a narrow ridge, searching in limited space, yet traversing expansive ground. Few clichés are used and the expansive approach is delivered with a minimal pallet through ingenious twists and turns. The quiet draws one in and the loud throws a bellow of sound that feels somewhat restrained in its aggression. It is the lack of juxtaposition and the oxymoronic expression that creates the jaw-dropping sound-scape. It must be something in the water, but a great point of reference would be Italy’s My Cat Is An Alien. The aforementioned duo have produced some of the greatest alien sounds and improvised dreamscapes I’ve heard and both Morgia and Magliocchi have most certainly matched this singular ability.

The record begins with a minimal and quiet world of rattling leaves, alien warbles and feral strings. Lunar plucks are warped and wrangled with chattering percussion that tremors and tumbles alike. At times it’s like disrupting a muted data-stream of caustic tones, yet its acoustic nature allows for organic warmth to glow trough. Guitar and cymbal play a horny dance in some fucked tryst that is joined by a grinding rhythm. Then the guitar erupts in a ferocious explosion of metallic quality. Bleating electronics sing an ode to the terminal as the percussion gongs with abrasive hands. There is a pastoral lunacy that evokes both Technicolor landscapes and barren remnants of sparsely populated wastelands. The second side continues many of the same themes, collapsing into a decayed and fractious explosion of guitar that absolutely rocks. The final section has similarities to Loren Connors most dramatic explorations. This is most definitely one of the best improvised records you’ll hear this year. Massive thumbs up!   9/10  Peter Taylor, Foxy Digitalis

A duo recording for guitar and drums, by two of Italy’s finest improvisors, although I never heard of them before. Their eleven pieces here is a combination of really wild free jazz gestures, but, and those work better, also of some great introspective moments. The techniques used here are fairly ‘normal’: the guitar sounds like a real guitar, the drums like drums. But that’s half the story: the pizzicato plucking of strings, the nervous playing of small percussive sounds, courtesy of UFIP (for which Marcello Magliocchi works), the addition of rock like effects, add a great energy to the record. Magliocchi likes his cymbals and uses them a lot, to create resonating, Bertoia like sound sculptures, bouncing of against the occasionally rock like guitar of Morgia. Quite a beast this one. Excellent to get more energy at the end of the day. Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly 793

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KOMMISSAR HJULER und MAMA BAER & NINNI MORGIA and SILVIA KASTEL - TWO COUPLES LP

Finally, I gots to tell you about the TWO COUPLES LP, UltraMarine Records’ highly unlikely but truly superb split vinyl LP (www.ultramarinerecords.com) on which two genuine musical couples rage it out a side apiece. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but each side is a compelling and thorough trip. Side one belongs to the screeching Nordic volva Mama Baer and her impressively named guitarist Kommissar Hjuler. And what a fucking superb Ur-racket this record is! Mama Baer, you shake me cold, ye stir me up, madam. Like Freyja Aswynn before her, Mama Baer rages far beyond her companion; indeed, part of the music’s charm is the way her inexorable inhaling of her partner’s vibe draws him on, even sometimes reluctantly. Urging urging she’s an Ur-pest worthy of a fucking Norse Myth is Mama Baer. I damn well adores it, motherfuckers. Over on side two, the slightly less deranged side two, Italians Ninni Morgia and producer Silvia Kastel nevertheless still give it a good seeing to by deploying the kind of arsenal of wild sounds and musique-concrète that woulda cropped up on some 1960 Group Ongaku LP. And when the droning and drenching, wrenching and heaving multiple violins kick into the wah-fray, Silvia could challenge Amon Düül’s Renate Knaup for World’s Krautest Yoko, if she weren’t Italian. Hey, and the front sleeve painted by Mama Baer is also a total vibe, brothers’n’sisters. So get this above everything if you just get the one. Julian Cope / Head Heritage, July Druidon

One of our recent live highlights was the insane performance at Glasgow’s Open School from a quartet that consisted of Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer in collaboration with guitarist Ninni Morgia and keyboardist Silvia Kastel. Performing the Zappa-inspired “Tell Me, Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?” Hjuler and Mama worked insane vocal magic with variations on the phrase while demolishing a piano and Morgia and Kastel accompanied them with jagged psych interventions. It was completely exhilarating and this LP, released to coincide with the tour, is the perfect companion. Hjuler’s side continues on the ferociously inspired form that marked out their split with The Hunter Gracchus, using guitar, tape and synth to reconfigure form and sense. The flip sees Morgia and Kastel operating in the mystery zone between psychedelic rock, free jazz and mainlined drone, a great compliment to the flip. Volcanic Tongue

The two couples mentioned in the title are Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer (who by now have gained some serious underground recognition) and Ninni Morgia and Silvia Kastel. The latter two are from Italy and play guitar and synth/voice. Both live in New York where they are actively involved in the world of improvised music. These two couples toured together and now there is this split LP. Two couples, one approach: weirdness. A curious mixture of free jazz/improvisation, tape manipulation and voice treatments (singing, moaning, crying, screaming), all loaded with a bunch of synths. There are however differences. Whereas Hjuler & Baer play like they do they always, which sounds like they their instruments for the first time: with complete freedom and without any control. Its probably exactly that trademark which makes that people love what they do. Morgia and Kastel use the same free-play in their work, but through experience of playing they became skilled improvisers, which is something that is shown in their four pieces. These are free yet more coherent than with the other couple. Its perhaps the side of the record that I like more, but that’s no doubt personal taste. That is not to say I don’t like the other side. It has that consistent charm that is part of the work of Hjuler and Baer, which I like when I hear it, but wouldn’t actively seek out every release. (Frans de Waard) Vital Weekly

You’ve gotta wonder what would be cooler: talking with the two couples that comprise both sides of the record, or listening to their music. In the case of guitarist Morgia, playing lightly off Silvia Kastel’s intense vocalizing and other treatments, it could go either way. And there’s never really a reason to listen to the broken, difficult sounds of Hjuler & Mama, even though they may have upwards of 600 releases out there. Think of all the things you can do with one side of a record if you knew you were never going to play that side again!
(Doug Mosurock/Still Single) /  Dusted Magazine

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Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Baer / Ninni Morgia & Silvia Kastel

The Banshee Labrynth, Edinburgh
Monday April 18th
4 stars

Neil Cooper, The List

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Ninni Morgia / William Parker
Prism
Ultramarine Records
2010

Master bassist and improviser William Parker has anointed many a free jazz artist in his 40 years in the business. From his work with Matthew Shipp, Charles Gayle and Joe Morris, he has shaped the direction of much American creative music. When he chooses to record with a new(ish) name, it is a reason to take note. Italian-born, New York resident Ninni Morgia has been gaining attention lately in the noise-rock band White Tornado and free jazz bands Death Pool, psychedelic outfit La Otracina, and jazz trio The Right Moves with Kevin Shea and Peter Evans.

Prism is a double LP (or digital download) release, featuring 15 shortish improvisations between the bassist and Morgia. While Morgia sticks to his distinct guitar sounds, Parker, on several tracks, switches to a slide whistle or gralle, a Spanish reed instrument. Ninni’s guitar tends to sound like a 1960s’ space computer with its human voiced pitches and electronic melodies. The playing remains quite open ended, Parker creating energy fields which Morgia can improvise over. He favors a Derek Bailey-like mixture of scattered notes and freneticism. The tempos shift song to song, never becoming redundant. The pair make a strong statement. Mark Corroto, All About Jazz

A double vinyl collaboration between free jazz bassist William Parker and avant-rock guitarist Ninni Morgia, Prism features four sides of duo interactions between these two well-regarded NYC musicians. With Morgia’s guitar sounding more like a tangle of vintage analogue electronics and Parker not only bringing his upright bass to the party but also employing both a slide whistle and a Catalan reed instrument called a gralla, the resulting pieces consistently take on an intriguing variety of shapes and sizes. Side one, for instance, features a series of duets that surround Parker’s nimble bass resonance with all manner of errant electricity - from pointed squeaks and murmurs to dynamic chatter and ghosted feedback. Elsewhere, the gralla’s sax-like song adds a more conventional jazz slant to one of the tracks while further in the slide whistle makes strange conversation with Morgia’s abstractions - all these instruments speaking different tongues but finding much common ground in the skilled hands of the players involved. (Andrew Carden, Rock-A-Rolla magazine, Dec ‘10/Jan 2011, Issue #29)

“This double vinyl slab features Italian guitarist Ninni Morgia, in duet with free jazz bassist William Parker. Listeners expecting standard jazz chords, or even skronk that obeys the rules of 21st Century avant improv, will be thrown off stride by what they hear. Morgia pushes his sound through pedals and devices until it’s a shrivelled set of electronic pulses; the sound of fingers or plectrum on strings is absent. It sounds like he’s playing a theremin sometimes, and other times it doesn’t sound like anyone’s playing at all. Instead it’s like listening to a conversation between two old dial-up modems. Parker, for his part, doesn’t always play bass, he blows a small whistle that’s ready and almost kazoo-like…when the bass is deployed, it’s with a thick, resonant rumble that anchors anything the guitar and/or electronics might come up with… Parker’s plucking is emotionally weighty, and Morgia’s guitar work, even at its most abstract and non-guitarish, has real beauty. You won’t hear anything else like this anytime soon”.
-Phil Freeman, The Wire, November 2010

This record’s like a breath of fresh air compared to most of what seems to pass for ‘free’ improv these days, it’s total ‘anything goes’ type shit (alas, not in a Cole Porter sorta way) with a sound palette that’ll have you scratching your head in disbelief, baffled at how two men can produce such a wide variety of sounds. Upright bass dude extraordinaire William Parker (who’s played with countless famous names throughout the years (perhaps most notably Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware and Peter Brotzmann) does far more than merely provide a bedrock - although he does that more than ably when required - with his bowing technique out in full and frequent force, managing to give me visual impressions on both a large scale (seismic land-shifts conjured by low frequency rumbling) and a small one (the chaos of molecules dancing blindly with one another). Ninni Morgia’s extraordinary guitar explorations provide similarly rich results and rarely sound anything like the instrument he’s using as his source.. Quite how anyone can conjure such bizarre cosmic squiggles and ghostly electronic melodies from the humble six-string is beyond me. Well, I guess he’s got a pedal or two but you know what I’m saying. A veeeeery interesting release.. And a genuinely exploratory one! -Norman Records
http://www.normanrecords.com/vinyl/121255-ninni-morgia–william-parker-prism

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from L’Oreille De Moscou:

Je crois que c’est Frank Zappa qui dans un grand moment de lucidité avait, en substance, fait ce constat :

“Le jazz n’est pas mort, il sent juste bizarre”.

Il y a peu de chance que cet avant-gardiste ait subodoré la rencontre récente, orchestrée pour Ultramarine Records, entre le guitariste Ninni Morgia - déjà croisé pour son travail au sein de The Right Moves- et le contrebassiste William Parker. Pourtant, là encore, le diagnostic est bon…Leur jazz est louche !

Prism, cet album étrange donc, célèbre une rencontre inventée, où l’électricité s’embarque tout proton dehors à l’assaut d’une autre forme de discussion, un dialogue dissonant où l’usage d’un nouveau dialecte ne serait le fruit ni d’un hasard génétique ni du long apprentissage de la vie, mais bien celui d’une volonté de fer de mettre la créativité au centre des débats pour en faire finalement le vocabulaire de la circonstance.

Profonde et complexe, sans fioriture ni effet d’intellectualisation sonore, cette musique reste parmi les plus libres qui soient. Peut-être pas d’accès, même si chacun pourra à tout moment y pénétrer avec ses envies, et surtout ses propres fantasmes. Mais plutôt par l’extraordinaire explosion d’ingéniosité, de malice, d’intelligence, et d’humour même, qu’elle représente.

Déroutant mais tellement fascinant.

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CHORA / QUIVERS split LP

Every Chora record is an adventure at the very least. This side (back in quartet lineup, same as Ruined Parabola) finds them in sax/percussion/whistle fight mode, which slowly transforms into a beautiful, dense rumination from the jungle canopy floor. Flutes, thumb piano and wood percussion swirl around and choke off the light. Great stuff, as usual. Quivers is a Brooklyn trio that plays in much more brittle forms, the standard guitar/bass/drums trio given a thorough reworking, pulling out of improvisation into something more mechanical and sinister. By the time their third track “Climbing” (part of a four-song suite about camping, called “Camping”) pulls in, they have shaken the bass down little more than a pulse, which anchors untenable, leaking noise and large, bowed objects in service of ideals with stress levels pinned. Every change is striking, every move precise. Great balance between these two groups, part of a new improv movement that’s definitely worth exploring. Doug Mosurock http://www.dustedmagazine.com/

Chora / Quivers, split LP

Two contemporary improv units from opposite sides of the Atlantic get a side each of long-playing vinyl to chew their way through here. Hailing from the UK, Chora expand their usual duo line-up of Rob Lye and Ben Morris to include Ben Nash and Karl Brummer, these four players borrowing deep into a single extended exploration of bowed drones and murky metallic scrape. Pursuing their own winding haunted-house course, they follow an eruption of agitated squall with a long mesmeric stretch of dark, primal magick. Divided into four shorter pieces of free-jazz rumpus Quivers’ contribution broils and simmers with a different kind of restless energy. Led by New York guitarist Ninni Morgia, along with Big Apple cohorts Jordon Schranz on upright bass and Mike Pride on drums, theirs is a terse bustle of electrical darts and disordered rhythms that starts off fractious but ultimately scores best with a spacious, more restrained mix of low-end warp and precise guitar deconstruction. - Andrew Carden, Rock-A-Rolla magazine Aug/Sep 2010

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from Julian Cope’s Head Heritage...

Okay, now let’s move on to this month’s Vinyl-Only Reviews Section, starting with the molto meditative ice dramas of DIRTY POOL by guitarist Chris Forsyth and organist Shawn Edward Hansen. Released on Italy’s excellent Ultramarine Records (www.ultramarinerecords.com), DIRTY POOL delights in liberating hackneyed blues guitar flourishes by rendering them not as the accompaniment for some journeyman singer but re-contextualized as glorious epiphanies ringing out across Terry Rileyan organ drones. Like Henry Flynt’s glorious (and gloriously inauthentic) backporch blues, DIRTY POOL is a horribly more-ish hybrid, one that confidently unites the amphetamine over-reaching gymnastics of unaccompanied early T. Verlaine with the conservatory sedateness of Overhang Party, elsewhere imposing the droning starkness of Nico’s ‘It Was a Pleasure Then’ with Ry Cooder’s PARIS TEXAS soundtrack. Neither rural nor urban – yet defiantly unsuburban – DIRTY POOL occupies a highly useful between-time hinterland that has me spinning this vinyl again and again.

Final vinyl of this month has to go to those three unsane practitioners known as Amolvacy, whose sensational new album A LU LA LU is out now on Ultramarine Records (www.ultramarinerecords.com). I raved about their debut in my Drudion for May 2008CE, but this newbie nails the Amolvacy metaphor even more firmly to the mast. Imagine Dagmar Krause’s Art Bears attempting Longfellow’s ‘Hiawatha’ with just tuned percussion and traps; imagine sparsely orchestrating Jaki Leibezeit’s most overt drum-a-thons with ESG vocal escapades; imagine the tragic childlike ‘Loud Loud Loud’ monologue of 666-period Aphrodite’s Child interspersed with Muslim Gauzean drones; imagine all of this and you’ll maybe glimpse just one miniscule aspect of Amolvacy’s hefty and rigorous worldview. But then, I believe superb shamanic vocalist/priestess Sheila 16 could make a catchy chorus out of anything and soon have the world singing along. Kiddies, Amolvacy is one hell of an original proposition, and their new clear vinyl 12” record comes replete with that same beautiful die-cut packaging as their first offering. If you have limited funds with which to deploy sonic weaponry against your neighbours, make sure you pick A LU LA LU by Amolvacy!

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Ninni Morgia Control Unit 2LP

Ultramarine

This is some really lovely free jazz exploration from an expressive set of musicians lead by the versatile guitarist, Ninni Morgia. Morgia is channeling the cosmic, chilled out, and psychedelic with his intense blending of styles on this record. At times the preceding can be colorful and joyous, and just as quickly things can slow down and get nice and microscopic. What holds the album together is the sweet sense of flow that makes this a joy to listen to.

The album is put together as a double lp- four sides, each with a couple movements a piece. Morgia is joined by Daniel Carter on horns and Jeff Arnal on percussion. Morgia himself plays various tonalities of electric guitar throughout, along with the occasional touches of keyboard and the like. Morgia’s work is informed by noisier experimentalists, jazz players, and classic psych styles alike. He blends these together to form a tasteful yet colorful pallette of textures and tones. While Morgia might be the leader of the group, his guitar never seems overbearing, and the other musicians really get a chance to shine. The structures of these pieces have the general push and pull common to a lot of farther-out jazz. Elements of classic Miles Davis, Albert Ayler, and Sun Ra all come to mind. Both the chaos and the quite are represented well.

I start to cringe a little when I hear an e-bow on the C-side of the lp, but I’m so relieved to hear Morgia using it in such a non-traditional manner. Likewise, the use of wah wah and slide are presented in ways that are totally non-cringe inducing. A great example is the opening track, which contains a certain menacing charm and some undeniably funk-influenced guitar work. It’s a delightfully strange composition that defies easy categorization.

A personal highlight for me is the cosmic creeper on side D. It’s a nice halfway point between “In a Silent Way” era Miles Davis and the droning psych of Expo 70. The subtle touches of mystery throughout the record really come to fruition on this track, and when it’s over I just want to start the journey again. This is a really pleasant listen for me overall, and for a double record it’s pretty easy to digest in just one sitting. 9/10 – Charles Franklin (24 February, 2010)

www.digitalisindustries.com

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Ninni Morgia Control Unit S/T 2LP

As the art work suggests, we’re entering a psychedelic environment, full of weird colors and fascinating hues. And so is the music, played by a trio but often sounding like a bigger band. Ninni Morgia plays guitar, bass, electric autoharp, electric sitar, keyboards, percussion and kalimba, Daniel Carter is on saxophones, trumpet, clarinet, flute and voice, and Jeff Arnal plays drums, percussion and thumb piano.

It’s hard to qualify the music: it holds the middle between prog rock, psychedelic rock, free jazz and world music, but then without the mellowness and shallowness usually attributed to the latter. There are no real vocals either. There are clear influences by bands like Soft Machine or even early Pink Floyd.

The soundscapes that Ninni Morgia creates on his electric instruments are, in combination with Arnal’s percussive drive, very hypnotic and mesmerising, with Carter having a ball by playing his sax and trumpet over this flowing background.

One of the album’s highlights is the long “Dhyana”, with sparse electric guitar notes, and unusual yet powerful singing by Daniel Carter, after which he switches to sax.

Ninni Morgia was not known to me. He is an experimental guitarist from Catania in Sicily, now living in New York, and primarily active in (noise) rock bands. The last thing you hear on this album is noise, though, but carefully crafted and varying soundscapes, each with its own character and emotional quality, all relatively accessible and welcoming, but not smooth: like with rock music, it has this raw, direct approach, more concerned with sound and overall effect than with harmonics and thematic development. The label’s website mentions Derek Bailey, Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis as references, but there is really nothing on this album that relates to them musically.

And it works : for sure the original musical vision is Morgia’s - and a strong vision at that - but the overall result is without a doubt as much to the credit of Carter and Arnal who complete the psychedelic vision to perfection. Not for the die-hard jazz fan, but pretty intense and captivating. (Stef Gjissels), from Free Jazz Stef

Guitarist Ninni Morgia is slowly but surely becoming a “name” in the circle of contemporary improvisation, well accepted by the likes of William Parker (with whom Morgia has recently released Prism on this same label – unluckily not heard here – which is receiving rave reviews even by establishment-nourished journalists). In this double vinyl from 2009, the Unit is completed by Daniel Carter on sax, clarinet and trumpet and Jeff Arnal on drums and percussion. Their interaction, definitely reminiscent of freeform jazz-rock aromas from the late 60s and early 70s (though I don’t get the Popol Vuh reference in the press release), flows across a spacey kind of vibe which is perceived as contemplative in a somewhat “stoned” fashion rather than constituting a veritable challenge for ears used to harsher kinds of adventurousness. This must not be intended as a lowering of the release’s worth; these juicy conglomerations of fluidly repetitive and heavily processed guitar lines, unadulterated melodic pensiveness-cum-blowouts and masterfully delivered metrical abstraction occasionally transcending in ritualism (at times, Arnal’s pulse sounds like the actual foundation of the whole creative edifice) can easily find a way into our short-term liking, for sure deserving a number of concentrated listens. Massimo Ricci - Touching Extremes

www.digitalisindustries.com

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Given that Noise as a movement was predicated on a desire to break free of straightjacket musical structures, it’s ironic that some of the more stimulating groups working in that zone have retained elements of rock. Units such as Mathew Bower’s Skullflower, the transatlantic trio PeeEssEye and Edinburgh’s Muscletusk have blended guitars and drums into the hum and roar of Noise to create a visceral, hybrid free rock. Temperatures are a London based duo of bassist/vocalist Peter Blundell and drummer James Dunn, who strip the form back to the bone, relying on the natural properties of their instruments, a handful of pedals and a synth wired up to the drums to create unruly, improvised Noise rock.

The obvious comparison would be Lightning Bolt, but Temperatures have a less bludgeoning, more light-footed approach, with Dunn’s drumming owing more to free jazz than hardcore, even hints of Prog. But there’s an infectious sense of irreverence and adventure that stops them getting bogged down anywhere too long. The two untitled tracks on the A side of this debut LP move from arrhythmic clatter, through shambolic Beefheart-style riffs and into an extended Krautrocking trance-groove. Through all of this, Blundell adds an extra layer of intrigue with murky, unintelligible vocal proclamations, sounding like Vivian Stanshall with his head in a bucket, learning to speak Esperanto in his sleep.

The B side is less propulsive – and less compelling – exploring instead some of the electronic textures you might experience at a standard Noise gig, with distorted bass and synth loops that hark back to late 1980s Industrial. When Dunn rises up with a heart-stopping swell of freeform percussive activity – and a touch of Chris Corsano’s feverish attention to cymbals and toms – it’s enough to make you thankful that the drum’s not dead.

Daniel Spicer
The Wire # 313 / March 2010

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Questions In A World of Blue - by Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector
http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2009/12/06/ultramarine/

The Ultramarine Records label used to be based in Brooklyn, now it’s in Italy, but its New York allegiances are still somewhat in evidence…pleased to receive four vinyl items which represents almost their entire output to date. Ninni Morgia Control Unit (UM005) is a double LP by this Brooklyn guitarist who teams up with veteran free honker Daniel Carter and drummer Jeff Arnal, to create four sides of not-unpleasant jazz-rock fusion music. Superficially, the sound of the album seems to be in thrall to the 1970s – Bitches Brew, Weather Report and late Soft Machine records are some obvious touchstones, but I’m hoping to find time to engage with Morgia’s soloing work (he also plays electric sitar, autoharp, keyboards and percussion) to discover something original he may have to offer us. Scott Colburn’s mastering gives the set added dynamic punch, and SpiralSmokey provided the dazzling cover art.

Chris Forsyth is the Brooklyn guitarist who can do no wrong for me. Here he is with Shawn Edward Hansen (from Phantom Limb and Bison) withDirty Pool (UM002), a gorgeous LP of instrumental music blending Forsyth’s golden-sunshine notes with the balmy Farfisa organ work of Hansen on these 2005 recordings. The entire A side is devoted to ‘I First Saw You’, a totally gorgeous continuous improvisation played in a single key inhabiting some zone of paradise where the best of Popol Vuh meets up with languid psychedelic musings. Forsyth’s confident strokes and licks contain compressed moments of pure genius. The cover here is attempting to emulate the look of an old Folkways or Origin Jazz Library LP, both of which wraparound paper pastedowns on black textured sleeves.

Amolvacy is an ad-hoc trio comprising two New Yorkers, Dave Nuss (No-Neck Blues Band) and Sheila 16 (Laboratory Theatre Group), joining forces with English wackster Aaron Moore from Volcano The Bear. A La Lu La (UM003) situates itself quite some way from the lengthy explorations of No-Neck, offering rather short and condensed tunes where the two guys demonstrate instrumental prowess with percussion and acoustic instruments, throwing out stark and wayward notes with inspiration. Over the top of these faux-primitive rhythmic backdrops, Sheila 16 caterwauls her unintelligible free-form wailing in shrill tones. Homage to various hip underground records from the 1960s is implied in these musical statements, and the back cover is printed with lines of quasi-Beat Poetry. Pressed in clear vinyl and housed in a very unusual fold-out cover with flaps.

Temperatures are of course English, the London duo of Peter Blundell and James Dunn, for whose recorded output I have cultivated a very soft spot of earth in the garden of my mind. Eksra (UM004) shows them using bass, drums, and synth as though the instruments had only just been discovered out of an archaeological dig, and the players are two scientist-musicians speculating wildly as to the original purpose of these unknown artifacts. Most effective is when Blundell adds his hideous grunting vocalising to certain tracks, arriving more successfully to my mind at the sort of primordial semi-conscious holy utterances that Sheila 16 claims to be aiming at. Eksra is not as outright brutal as their early work, yet still delivers many crushing tromps and bludgeoning moments. I have no idea what the image on the front cover could be, but it feels decidedly sinister, like the printout from a ghastly machine that measures psychic disruptions in the atmosphere.