Snowdonia

Sardonic, but never vulgar (perhaps even anti-vulgar), elusive, irreverent, subtly anti-intellectualist. A thousand adjectives still wouldn't fully capture the essence of Snowdonia, one of the most influential and important Italian record labels, arguably decisive for the development of the new domestic underground of the mid-90s.

In the words of its founders Marco Pustianaz, Cinzia La Fauci and Alberto Scotti, the aesthetic (if one can even speak of a truly defined aesthetic) of the “Snowdonian mystery” is that of a “hardcore” avant-garde, distinctly late-20th-century, perhaps the real point of contact between Italian rock and provocation as such, bearing signifiers stripped bare or meanings that refer only back to themselves.

Compared to other so-called "avant" labels (Psychotica, Bar La Muerte, Seahorse, Fooltribe, Ebria, etc.), Snowdonia represents the shrewd and elusive current, the only one truly capable of seriously projecting a strong image as a forge of assorted debunking, a factory of futile ideas aimed at serious reasoning, of purely self-referential creativity taken as genuine erudite dissertation.

The most stereotyped elements of the avant-garde (gestural art, concept art, body art, performance, anti-objecthood, etc.) are enriched with contradictions, playfulness, oblique paths. And they finally arrive at the impetuousness typical of rock music, while always maintaining a proverbial, even metaphysical, detachment.

But more than aesthetics, the essence of Snowdonia shines through ethics; and it's the ethics of the much-reviled "lo-fi". Low quality as a probe of a razor-sharp imagination, one that haphazardly mixes the signs of modernity and postmodernity, of the collective imaginary and of advertising, of consumerism and of society's preordained structures, ultimately becomes a means of knowledge. It's no longer, or not only, protest for its own sake, or rebellion as yet another offshoot of punk, but rather a means of inquiry, even of questioning, of amused intellectual experimentation.

Snowdonia's postmodernity nevertheless draws its sap from the endless drive of childhood play, or in any case from a freedom that is first and foremost childlike. In this way, its engine runs both on an open-ended theme that shuffles the signs of the "easiest" contemporaneity without any order, and thanks to a pseudo-existential message of non-sense and non-morality. Thanks to this compromise (part balance, part niche, part last-minute contrivance), the existential adventure inherent to the label — its productions, its images (strong or otherwise), its presentations and promotions, right down to the naming and the tracklists — isn't all that far removed from the cosmic ravings of the Residents and the other great freak high priests.

Snowdonia began life as a fanzine (one of the most cult products of the Italian and international underground industry) in the first half of the '80s, the brainchild of Marco Pustianaz. After a glorious run documenting largely obscure phenomena on the Italian scene (albeit already widely alternative at the time), Pustianaz abandoned the project. Collaborators Cinzia LaFauci and Alberto Scotti, both from Messina, carried the idea forward, converting it into an independent label for self-produced demos and cassettes by emerging artists.

This embryonic version of Snowdonia simply combined Pustianaz's original intentions with the practical side of things: not just the circulation of underground music information, but the production and distribution of new discoveries. The philosophy of "playful mystery" was perhaps already there in embryo, but the true Snowdonian explosion had to wait until 1997, the year the label's catalogue switched over to official releases and the Maisie project was born, formed by La Fauci and Scotti themselves, always the label's flagship act.

The archetypal Snowdonia album, the archetypal Snowdonia production, can be summed up in a Maisie album, or at least in their first records (The Incredible Strange Choir Of Paracuwaii and Do You Remember When You Found Your Lud In My Nostril?).

The perfect Snowdonian album is chiefly an album "without". Without an author (who prefers to hide within the folds of an empty message), without apparent form (no real songs, no real suites, no real tracklists in the conventional sense), without strong personalities (albeit with notable exceptions who would go on to break into the jet-set of Italian alternative rock), without a recognizable style, and sometimes without any real autonomy or listening pleasure of its own (often replaced instead with a thoroughly disturbing intensity).

Snowdonia's main, Zappa-esque invention, namely the "thematic compilation" (where the theme is, from one release to the next, fantastical gastronomy, pornography, a phantom tribute to Maisie built on a single song repeated ad infinitum, etc.), remains genuinely borderline.

But the catalogue in its entirety is borderline too, the label's whole opus, starting with the packaging: the artwork and the promotional care given to image (or anti-image) are worthy of the meticulousness of the finest graphic design studios; even the website (see) shows a coordinated visual precision that sharpens the contrast with the absurdity of the individual releases.

The generous list of Snowdonian productions officially begins, then, in 1997, and precisely with a compilation, Orchestre Meccaniche Italiane. It's the label's big bang, showcasing a portfolio of noise, free jazz, no wave, and homemade electronic applications, and one of the finest calling cards the label ever produced. Parading through it are Stoves, the Residents-indebted Pangolinorchestra, Maisie's own baptismal tracks ("19:00", "I Am A Compacter Of Rubbish", "Road Tenders", "My Body Was A Luminous Accumulator"), Jacopo Andreini's "Affreux", the sonic experiments of Nando Meet Corrosion and Carv-E, and the industrial of Jealousy Party.

It's the prelude to Sbim & Sbam, from 1998, opus number two and the label's second compilation, this time a two-CD monolith that stands out as an experiment in "collective concept", the first of the compilations built around a unified theme (the theme of Orchestre was still being weaned). Based on shoddy, ever more sardonic science-fiction themes (the Residents' Trilogy reduced to an impertinent caricature), on kitsch "monster movie" fare, or on entirely invented sci-fi, the collection plays the part of a collector of obscure Italian and foreign music.

Besides new Maisie tracks (chiefly the multicoloured "Pakistani Space Mission"), the release actually has a notably Zappa-esque mood, along with exciting new contributions such as the electronics of "Frontalone lunare" (Margine), the broken garage-rock of "Suzie Wong In Wonderland" (Motor Dimension Idols), the concrete noise of "Seventhy Day Adventurist" (Post Prandials), the deformed sonic spectres of Daniele Brusaschetto, and the analogue sound of Gastel Etzwane.

That same year also saw the release of Maisie's first proper album, Maisie And The Incredible Strange Choir Of Paracuwaii. As with the Residents' "Commercial Album", the debut by the Messina label's two founders is an opulent catalogue of tracks each built around a single idea, but the whole — monumental as it is — goes beyond mere tribute ("Hitler Was Not Mad", "It's Only A Joke-Scherzo", "She's A Mongoloid Pin Up"). Each track is developed to the point of exasperation, filtered through an original take on no wave (electronic yet elusive, spectral yet exuberant), even if deliberate anarchy reigns supreme, to put it mildly.

There's literally an embarrassment of riches to choose from, from the free jazz of "Song About The Several Ways To Use A Woman" to the shameless mixtures of consumerist ads and slogans, a fantastical absurdity delivered with an almost incorruptible swagger, and even a desperate audacity.

'99 opens with The Last Famous International Gluttons, one of the most famous (and rightly so) Snowdonian thematic compilations. Dedicated to gastronomy, or rather to "gastrophony," it is in fact a learned exploration of total contamination, bordering on conceptual art. Every song is a nonsensical "recipe" that, by design, is meant to instill in the listener a compulsive urge to actually try it out in the kitchen, even setting aside the purely musical aspect (among them, "Atomic Sushi," "Chick-Peas In Alcohol," "Thin Soup With Frogs," "Omelette Lunaire," and so on).

The musical side, meanwhile, is a fresh roster of soured no wave ("Sites" by Missselfdestrrruction, "Pain Waits Until 5 Pm" by Doctor Nerve), Residents-style anti-muzak ("Sangsue Dessous" by Palo Alto2, "Goujonnettes De Sole Au Safran" by Diledadafish and "Kuu Otoko" by Phnonpehn Model), and assorted parodies ("Bari Soba" by I.s.o., "Bread" by Jealousy Party, "Calcolatore" by Sprout, "Love You" by Maisie and "Stock Arrangement" by Trumans Water).

Likewise, the following legendary thematic compilation Atomic Milk Throwers is dedicated to pornography as a source of inspiration (in the broadest sense of the term) for the artists gathered here, and towers as a collection of Beefheart-esque anti-funk spasms and caricatures of ballroom easy-listening music.

Monophon, the only solo release of the year, is instead the spin-off project of Andrea Azzali (already known for Tac Parts and Razza Ventura). The tracks, almost all untitled, pursue a form of hyperkinetic jam-dub (sometimes simply drum 'n' bass), free analog sounds and samples treated as disjointed sonic sculptures. The result recalls Subotnick's virulent tone poems and industrial music; there are also nods to Steve Reich's "Drumming" ("04") and to minimalism in general ("Continuum," the peak), though several tracks are colorless or simply lesser.

The Monophon project mainly serves to open new paths for the label. Thus, 2000 kicks off with Courmayeur, the brainchild of Aerodynamics (a trio from Pesaro, later mutating into Camillas with just Ondedei and Bertuccioli), a hardcore techno venture with languid Depeche Mode-like vocals and various alien touches (as in "Abel"), partly wave in the vein of B-52's, partly inane muzak, complete with incoherent drum 'n' bass passages that even recall Mr Bungle ("Baker").

Et Sise, on the other hand, is the album with which Stefania Pedretti's Allun gain strength and become known within the Italian underground scene. Their no wave parade rivals the illiteracy of the Shaggs and the tangled pieces of the Raincoats. Their barrages of artificial sounds join demonic pounding in tracks like "Manichini," "Lav Lodam," "Miele" and "Eigub." Special mention, however, goes to the leader's own vocal performance, through which she shows off her Diamanda Galas-like histrionic gifts, geared toward the absurd. Rounding things out are a few bullet-like tracks (the untitled ones), sometimes rarefied ("Giardini del nulla" and "Erapocs"), sometimes pure agglomerations of non-music ("La creazione," their personal artistic peak).

2000 is above all the year of two Snowdonian masterpieces. The first, Duozero's No Programma 1999 2000, is an amateurish (yet extremely erudite) electronic ambient-dub experiment, and one of the high points of the entire catalog (almost free-electro).

The second is the self-titled (and only) album by Faccions, an eight-piece from Urbino devoted to a new brand of anti-blues in the manner of Captain Beefheart and the early Bad Seeds' Nick Cave, but with noise-dada outbursts even more pronounced than their masters', complete with all manner of inventions (spectacular riffs, electrified violin, etc.) and dynamic orchestrations of the grotesque.

Following these two gems is Fausto Balbo's Zero, an album split between lo-fi electronics, rhythmic experiments worthy of early Robert Wyatt, sui generis compositions (jungle beats and hard-rock guitars), small glitch-ambient suites and funereal techno-rock, all united by an undercurrent of latent insolence.

Then comes Glad To Be Here, the debut by Larsen Lombriki, which impresses with an even more lo-fi take on early Royal Trux ("Lucifer," "Buddha's Ride"), or amateurish moments ("Mexican Shotgun"), or its cartoonish take on country ("Everyday"), its cut-rate para-psychedelia ("Please I Am Busy Please") or its saccharine idea of a remix ("Micro Deutsche Welle").

St Ride (the launch of a Genoa-based outfit's project, co-produced with Mizmaze) plunges headfirst into digital ambient-techno-dub, twisting its premises. First, dub-industrial creations brimming with creative sound projections echo Pan Sonic, the electro-leaning Radiohead of Kid A, and Warp and Anticon-style sonorities ("Antares," "Mystipic," "Eskimoff"). The second block gathers curious midtempo pieces, from improbable breakbeat numbers (cello, loops, chatter) like "Sqeuak the Mouse" to electronic hip-hop with muted sounds like "Area X." The third aims for Autechre-esque pastiche: "Report."

Detached from any formula, and more inclined toward new sui generis collage operations, is "Eskimon," in which fresh icy textures are rebuffed by jolts and stimuli that culminate in a fierce surge of homemade drones. What transcends the formula the most is the glitchy post-jazz of "Alienite," unsettled by volatile cacophonies and layers of noise drawn from supersonic loops (and, to a lesser extent, the electronic flair that opens "Sclock," which then settles into fairly conventional chill-out).

The project as a whole sounds so self-referential that it can claim to embody a new formula for electronic music, a new spirit in the composition of beats and soundscapes.

The prolific year of 2001, the peak of Snowdonia's golden age and a boom time for the label, opens with Poppies Of Fourteen by Al & Del, the Messina label's first co-production (the partner here being the Japanese Novel Cell Poem), and a collaboration between Christophe Petchanatz of Klimperei and the balladeer Al Seamless.

This is, above all, the label's first genuine foray into singer-songwriter territory. Filtered through the Snowdonian lens, the songwriting comes out spare and humble, essentially oblique (guitar, piano, voice and secondhand arrangements). There are short tracks that subtly plagiarize the genre's giants (Barrett, Cave, Waits), such as "Eko For Cocker," "Scalp Irritation," "Jnp," "Fishes," at times irreverent but mostly decadent, or lysergic pieces ("Sick") that spill over into broad singalong melody ("Judy Blues," "Doc Computer"), and even into caricature ("Therefore"). Taken individually, these are songs that don't leave much of a mark, but the album picks up on what they have in common, trying to tightly link them to one another (in practice, a failed concept album).

Al & Del's attempt perhaps serves to lay the groundwork for the true debut of a still-unknown Bugo. La prima gratta is thus another adventure in demotape-quality songwriting, with influences that are well-defined yet still bold (from the obvious Beck, to Prince, to Jon Spencer) when they're not simply half-baked.

A revised and updated collection of his earliest recordings, the Cristian Bugatti of Prima Gratta reveals a more cynical personality along the lines of Warren Zevon, one who cares little for charisma (something he would later cultivate). The collection swings from deflated bubblegum ("Nei momenti così" and "Quante menate che mi faccio") to gutted, self-imploding Beck-isms ("I baci della mia nonna", the Pixies-esque "Una bottiglia di uischi", and "Ragazza cuboide", a demo of his dating back to '98), to Donovan-style voice-and-guitar ditties ("Solitario", "Il cellulare è scarico", "Spermatozoi"), to existential divertissements confided into an intercom ("Oggi come sto", "Potrebbe andar meglio", even chopped up into "...nca il tempo"), to oddball grunge ("Sabato mattina" and the frustrated "Cicca nei capelli iea!"). The line between one idea and the next couldn't be more blurred; what matters is the sheer radicalness of his sloppiness.

After a nod to the Miracles' "Tears of a Clown" ("Nonne posso più", squeezed into falsettos and excessive distortion), the experiments start to take over, and it's here that the real leap in quality hits the ear. From "Raggio Laserr" to the other connecting skits, we arrive at "Gocce di wita", an absurd union of amateurish videogame drum'n'bass and a collage of phone-sex line conversations, chatter reduced to gibberish and disorienting splices.

The absolute peak of the year, however, is L'infanzia di M, credited to Forbici Di Manitu, an obscure band from Emilia Romagna that has built up a well-deserved mythology over the years. Infanzia di M itself is the product of continuous reworking, restoration and remixing, with origins dating all the way back to 1989.

The tour de force of the record (and pretty much their whole career) is the 12 minutes of "Il plusvalore e l'assoluto": 3 minutes of an enchanted flute phrase (as Eastern-tinged as it is serial), 6 minutes of increasingly brutal blows dealt to the flute by electronic distortion, and 4 minutes of a blatant duet between the distortion and a sort of industrial turbine, something halfway between the anguished disturbances of Antonioni and the spasms of Stockhausen. "L'infanzia, come più o meno tutti", after an anti-ethnic, bell-chiming rarefaction (the Residents in fairy-tale mode), focuses on a new dialogue — perhaps a bit distracted — between serialism (this time on piano) and tropicalia rhythm, marred by random tapping.

Their arcane, pre-psychedelic if not downright prehistoric music, their collage of disparate sonic events linking Can, early Kraftwerk, the Zappa of "Absolutely Free" and certain late Canterbury acts, shows the constant presence of percussion above all in "Sette casse d'ossa", the first of the shorter tracks (though by no means lesser), with a dancing back-and-forth between flutes (and electro beats) and relentless voodoo percussion, functioning like a verse-chorus structure, or a genuine call-and-response. "Officine Lombardoni" overflows with a peculiar take on dance industrial and EBM, an adagio of electronic percussion onto which a monstrous, cybertronic apparatus is grafted — their own modern dance filtered through Cccp.

The Snowdonia ethic and aesthetic are polished to perfection on Magic Secret Room, a florilegium of phenomenal, grotesque and playful monstrosities (still filtered through analog gear), perhaps the definitive record of the whole Snowdonia catalogue, or at least the one that best captures its essence and best develops the Residents' idea (almost always silent, save for the one sung interlude "Puppet Dancehall") as a springboard for exploring the uncharted territories of electronic keyboards.

Two minutes of freakout ("Abacus") introduce the 10 minutes of "Au Santé de l'Enfant", a halting, thriller-like passage accompanied by dissonance that builds toward a dizzying rise in tension (mirrored by minimalist variations), complete with psych percussion à la Red Crayola, before finally collapsing into a grotesque parody of waltz and tap-dance. Dance again (a deathly lounge-bossa) appears at the close of "Jerry McQuiete", after a dark-wave procession that echoes the same approach as Neu's "Negativland" (here slowed down, uglified, tormented). The same revisited, thunderous, expressionist motorik pervades "Mircea Hopes for You" (and, in even stranger form, "Join"), a track that suggests the ensemble's true aim is to find the most genuine intersections between the Residents and Neu.

Yet scraps of Xenakis-like electronic poetry emerge in the second half of the more humble "Risin Aluminum Valley". After another freak orgy ("Slurplunapark", as obsessive as "Sister Ray"), the vacant, panicked rambling of "Canoyzip Diving" recalls Bo Diddley's percussive shuffle, with the high-pitched synth playing the role of the "blues" harmonica, before it starts resonating in a black-hole dimension of alien reverb, takes on clownish tones, and finally sinks into enigmatic telephone trills.

The second Maisie record, Do You Still Remember When You Found Your Iud In My Nostril?, is a monumental catalogue of idiocies and shapeless outcasts. The influences broaden from the Residents to the toxic dementia of Royal Trux and even the cosmic sarabands of Sun Ra.

From the lo-fi fanfares of "My Funky Valentine" and "Love Is A Television", through "Yesterday I Was Sad" and the Velvet Underground-esque gait of "Fish Heads", the record unfolds like a dissonant funfair featuring music-box organettos ("Jimmy Robot"), techno detours (the new version of "Pakistani Space Mission") and a mortified Tin Pan Alley, endlessly taken apart and put back together ("Lo-Fi Beauty").

The duo actually masks a rather embarrassing lack of musical literacy remarkably well, especially in the cretinous flamenco of "Summertrainlove" (the most "played" track of the bunch), but they also use it to heighten low-definition highs ("Big Mac Blues" and "Son Of A Chicken") and childlike little songs ("Resta di stucco è un barbatrucco" and the techno version of "She's A Mongoloid Pin-Up").

Instrumental or sung, the difference is minimal, such is the level of numbing idiocy; what matters is the compositional idea underlying it all, modulated to the point of suggesting one colossal wind-up.

The winning streak continues with the only record credited to Missselfdestrrruction (preceded by a demo), Asimmetrica, an original reinterpretation of post-rock, with touches of essential dream-pop (and of Young Marble Giants), plus a package of spasms, loops and gurgles. Their sonic spectrum ranges across skillful alterations and modulations between Sonic Youth and Shellac, Lydia Lunch and Uzeda, atonal and minimal rock, free-jazz splatters, industrial noise and genuine soundscapes.

The other one-off record, Meatballs Flying Underground by Mutable, is instead a cluster of short, antiquated psych-pop vignettes, wordless but with the usual pronounced amateurish streak (homemade samples, electronics, cheap effects, etc.).

Snowdonia returns to thematic compilations with Pakistani Space Album, yet another provocation. A single song (“Pakistani Space Mission” by Maisie) is handed over to a host of artists (Zu, Lo-Fi Sucks, Inside, Falter Bramnk, Flying Star Fish etc.), Snowdonia regulars and not, to reinterpret according to their own personal stylistic viewpoint. The theme, the sardonic leit-motiv penned by Scotti and La Fauci, is thus repeated nineteen times, always in a different guise, at times making the work resemble a soundtrack more than an actual compilation.

The provocative element lies precisely in the fact that the ostensible intent (science fiction) is more fictitious than ever; the real themes are Maisie's and the label's invented crisis of inspiration, and – indeed – a sui generis study of the concept of leit-motiv. Continuing with the Chinese boxes, the theme of the crisis of inspiration becomes a source of new invention. Ultimately, the work as a whole comes across as an exorbitant act of Maisie egocentrism.

While 2001 closes with the release of Vlucht Over Den Haag by the German act Trespassers W. (admittedly a minor record of theirs), 2002 opens with a new foreign production, Integral by the Finnish Ektoverde (their second album). Integral is something of a confirmation that foreign productions are not Snowdonia's strong suit; Ektoverde's is a heavily experimental jazz-rock that wanders aimlessly through a Canterbury-sound geared towards soundscape (and even the minimal). Likewise, Raw Ohm is the mediocre sole live album by Ohm (based in Dallas), featuring rock, or at any rate playable, versions of the tracks from their first two studio records.

Maisie's contribution, Music Is A Fish Defrosted With A Hair-Dryer, gives body and shape to their non-compositions, somewhat like Royal Trux after “Twin Infinitives“. One begins to hear fully-fledged cabaret sketches, while the elements fall into some kind of order (however surreal, as in “Dick Smart”), or pay greater attention to bizarre sounds (no longer as iconoclastic as on the first two albums). The inspiration is strongest in tracks like “Las Momias” and “Sadist Of Notre Dame” (the only genuine echo of the Residents), while it is diluted in elegant parades reminiscent of a village band (“Resta di stucco”), of a cabaret hall (“I’m Swinging”, “Plaisir A Trois”) and of a crooner (“Uxoricide Waltz” and “Sun Burns In Pink Air”).

While keeping the lo-fi approach steady, this is the album that marks the start of the band's transition, thanks above all to the arrangements by Frenchman Falter Bramnk.

And it is precisely Falter Bramnk, brought in as arranger and re-inventor of Maisie, who is behind the label's final international production of the year, titled Reflux, a series of absurdist instrumental sketches that are nevertheless at times conventionally structured (hard rock, vaudeville, disco music, film music etc).

So, having left the “cosmopolitan” 2002 behind, in 2003 Snowdonia once again focuses on what it does best, namely unearthing new stars from the Italian underground scene. Thus Milan's Egokid, with their Egotrip, deliver psych-pop numbers in the most genuinely Flaming Lips-esque manner, with a certain college-pop epic quality (“Helen”, “Hetro Retro Homo Superior”), pragmatic looseness à la Stereolab (“Girl From Venus”) and Elephant 6 textures (“Belagente”).

Gli anni di Globiana by veterans Le Masque fully returns to a Residents-à-la concept, albeit carried out in an easy-listening mode, and bolstered by easy stylistic excursions (samba, jazz-lounge, salsa, ballroom dance music).

Maisie's own patrons also return, albeit with an anomalous project. Bacharach For President Bruno Maderna Superstar is a continuation of their “de-evolution”. Here Maisie flirt with the Japanese kitsch-pop of Pizzicato Five and Cibo Matto, but also with new-generation foxcore and electroclash; the cacophonous insertions have by now become sophisticated, the experiments more slavish. There are nursery rhymes (“I Am Ashamed”, “Post Modern?” “Post Modern!”), night-club interludes (“Fight Song #7”), oblique hip-hop à la Bjork (“Guts”), industrial-EBM vignettes (“Vigo oh oh”), wedding-band ditties and floozy pop (“Sypsysolly”). More broadly, what convinces is the melodic rediscovery of their lo-fi roots, best exemplified perhaps in “Easy Tune For Simon Jeffes”; a new creative milestone is in any case reached with the space-age pop of “H.a.d.d.”, for electronic keyboards alone.

In 2003 the label also christens Piedmont's own Orange, producing their official debut Carnival & Cosmos, a lush, chain-like collection whose tracklist suggests suite forms that, on listening, turn out to be deceptive (and at times the titles promise far more than the songs actually deliver). For instance, “In Carnival Times” is a Throwing Muses-style cow-punk number (aided by a cameo from Cinzia LaFauci) in which the harmony is knocked senseless by lysergic jokes and intrusions of tape and samples, and the idea is simply reiterated in “Song of the Cock”, at most applied to the lo-fi of Jad Fair. The roots-rock meditation that comes between them, “Me and My Pig”, is literally overtaken by “Chicken Soup with Barley”, which is downright atonal.

The earnest parody of college-rock in “The Incredible Phantasmagoria of Hernando De Soto”, actually a collage of sonic torture, links them back to the mischief of Camper Van Beethoven, though without updating it for the 2000s, preferring instead to simply make it transgressive. Their stylistic pinball machine can also sound irritating (psychedelic vaudeville numbers like “A Beggars Dream”, post-punk like “Movies”, and even Enya-style soundscapes on “The Earth Seen from the Moon”), although on tracks like “Telephone Song” and “About the Rain” the band manages to find a sort of contemplative (yet also hysterical) streak amid the chaos of grimaces.

The record is so packed with non-sense moments that listening to it feels like a pure contradiction in terms, an untellable sequence of denials and reaffirmations.

The return to thematic compilations with What Would This Record Have Sounded Like If John Cale Had Had Some Setback and Cinzia La Fauci and Alberto Scotti Had Taken His Place (a collective tribute to the Stooges) is this time skippable, despite the ambition of the names involved, from Solex to Oxbow.

Thus Tottemo Godzilla Riders (with Klippa Kloppa), aka Nicola Mazzocca, is a disappointing return to their original lo-fi, in the form of amateurish videogame-style shibuya-kei (redeemed only by “Onaka Ga Suita”, a collage of distortions, and by the pseudo-minimalism of “Mosura”).

The best work of the year is thus easily found in Sen Soj Trumas, by Bologna's own Transgender. Kitsch post-rock à la Trans Am, Melvins-esque doom, Floyd-ian cosmic music, polka matryoshkas, grotesque Russian ballets gutted and reassembled at breakneck speed – these are just some of the ingredients in this original blend. An effective summary of what they're about is already in the name: bastard crossbreeds of genres, with an instinctive creativity worthy of Japanese prog-zeuhl and the voracity of Mike Patton at his best, where even the electronic sounds serve to stitch together a prodigious remix of Italy's recent-past alternative rock (CSI).

The revisionist spirit of 2003 carries over into early 2004 with records like Linings by Lombard act Dontcareful, a minor tribute to synth-pop, electroclash, EBM (which spills over into hypertrophic trance on "The Game About You") and gothic industrial ("Dwarves Dance", "Passing Compexion").

Nuclear big-beat in the vein of Atari Teenage Riot triumphs on Full Speed In The Wrong Direction, released under the name Plozzer (alongside garage, two-step and dub-step on "Revolvering", jungle, and cartoonish goa-trance on "Attack Of The Giant Pinballs" and "Il Ribelle Revisited"), with a wide range of disturbing acoustic effects, held back only by the length of the tracks (more like studies than fully realized dance-electronica poems).

But it's above all Scarapocchio (born from an original idea by Marco Canala, later joined by Roberto Amabili, both from the Marche region) who shines with Attenti Sono Felice, thanks to a spot-on blend of Captain Beefheart and Jon Spencer, with dandyish, circus-like tones reminiscent of Kevin Ayers, casting himself as both a balladeer of the absurd ("Spermicidio") and a prince of creative — almost always dissonant — pairings of lo-fi and mixed technique that at times recall an acidified version of Afterhours (especially on "Endoscopia", with its Native American-style tom-toms).

Finally, Sugar Plum Fairy by The Finger plays out as an exercise in scenic mimicry that spills over into simple ballads, often Beatles-esque, and into the usual lo-fi pop; ultimately, Franco Di Terlizi's project remains a strongly singer-songwriter-driven, traditionalist, even conservative affair.

It falls instead to 13 Little Radio Singles, by the Romagna band Aidoru (formerly Konfettura), to turn the tide between 2004 and 2005, to the point where one can speak of a new season of fertility for the Messina-based label (even if it often has to lean on the insights of its past). The label's proverbial taste for provocation returns in force: Aidoru's Singoli have nothing radio-friendly about them; their masterstroke lies precisely in combining post-rock's most bizarre variants (slowcore, stoner, electronic alike) in a deeply cerebral way.

It's effectively a heterogeneous mosaic (with a palette ranging from spoken-word pieces like "Io guardo spesso il cielo" to ballads like "Giorni") in which every track contradicts the one before it, taking back whatever was said previously; extreme cases include the dreadful Renaissance (medieval) saltarello (madrigal) of "Angelo-gnomo" and the two-voice sonata of "Phase-Difference".

The follow-up to Zero, for Fausto Balbo, is called Falbo. In this new collection of electro-glitch collages (which this time sound like genuine soundscapes), the artist raises his cockiness and irreverence to the refined level of atonal music. A one-of-a-kind case in the whole catalogue, almost anti-musical, the album piles up fragments, splinters and sampled cast-offs of every sort (a faint rhythm surfaces only on "Pensiero primitivo sottopelle") in a compositional essay devoted to absolute enigma.

As if that weren't enough, Lo Zecchino D'Oro Dell'Underground also takes it upon itself to revive the label's legendary thematic Snowdonia-style compilations (shelved after the disappointing What Would This Record), in truth one of their boldest provocations, one that manages to give new meaning to the very concept of a "compilation": a bunch of kids — one or more per artist — are enlisted to reinterpret a song by more or less well-known artists from the Italian alternative scene (alongside the artists themselves).

The overall effect is dissonant and irreverent, even managing to bring together acts notoriously far removed from Snowdonia (one above all, Marlene Kuntz). In some cases — though these are the exceptions — the resulting tracks come off as accommodating, properly childlike in structure, leaving plenty of room for the child's own personal interpretation (as with Mariposa). A provocation within the provocation is "La canzone delle tre vite", credited to Rosolina Mar, a band notoriously instrumental.

Another high point of the year is Free From Deceit Or Cunnings by Larsen Lombriki. The sound hasn't changed much from Glad To Be Here, five years earlier, but now the band sounds glacial and haughty ("Kosuth Youth" and "Carry On Devoted Forced Laughs"). Their stammering garage-beat numbers, with low-definition crooner vocals ("Honey"), shade into slapdash industrial-psychedelic excursions ("Cane nero del Congo") and into trance with skewed beats ("Stupid Rock 'n' Roll"). Largely Residents-esque across many tracks, the band even goes as far as mangling Kills on "Ballad Of The Bleeding Man", remixing merseybeat on "Time For Love", and flirting openly with Zappa-esque de-composition ("Zalien") — a nod to Frank Zappa.

Maisie, meanwhile, confirm their turn toward simplicity with Morte a 33 Giri, by now the product of a genuine band, far more authorial and singer-songwriter-driven, more like a proper outfit and more fully played than their early efforts, with Italian lyrics and La Fauci's overbearing presence dominating everything else.

Now fully assimilated and almost on intimate terms with Italian-style muzak ("L'inverno precoce" and "?Uma.no"), the record rides the same wave as many other Italian artists (including labelmates like Bugo), propelling the duo into the alternative jet-set. The whole thing remains limp, intriguing only here and there (as in the now overly convoluted lo-fi echo of "Vivan Las Cadenas" and the trip-hop flaying of "Sistemo l'America e torno", the kitsch of "Una canzone riciclata" and the brazen techno of "Finché la borsa va lasciala andare").

Soundtrack Stories by Falter Bramnk is a worthy follow-up to 2002's Reflux, a collection of pieces that are no longer (or not merely) simple instrumental sketches, but genuine miniature poems making free use of mixed technique (analogue, digital and sampled alike, sometimes even within a single track).

Thus Cantina Tapes by Vittorio De Marin (under the well-loved moniker Gomma Workshop) looms as perhaps the most gloriously futile experiment in the entire catalogue; a sort of vintage toy built from electronics and children's instruments, generating broken beats and evocative rarefactions, indulging in piles of samples (in a manner reminiscent of Black Dice) and second-hand psychedelia ("Fantajma" and "Melotone"), with painstaking work on pictorial sound and handcrafted soundscapes ("Woodhood").

The year closes with Contrappunti by Progetto M.B. (aka Marco Bucci, from Ostia), a collage-based debut that forms a sort of mosaic of his past output of self-produced CD-Rs and cassettes. This small, understated suite, very much in the style of "discreet" Brian Eno, is unusually lyrical and at times disrupted by richly varied electronic interference (always used sparingly), whether in the acoustic fairy-tales with electronic radio static of "Sorvolando" and "Nel Mentre", or in the near-prog vignette of guitars — where the "counterpoints" of the title are perhaps best realized — and ticking percussion of "Appena un Attimo" and "Se Non Ora Quando", or in the post-rock of "Sassaiola" and "Oberato di…", the only tracks to feature drums, though played so sparingly they evoke Eastern art. The most complex piece by far is "Tre Civette", a Hare Krishna chant with Persian-style improvisation, mixed with a slowed-down Goran Bregovic track in the background. But Bucci achieves equally phantasmagoric effects in the pipe-organ-and-ghostly-keyboards duet of "8on", the muted chamber-music invocation of "Allorquando", and the jazz stylization with faintly cosmic overtones of "Vesna Serba". The style and handwriting of the suite are original, if excessively timid, at times so introverted as to sound like a parody of low-grade new age music, almost an easy listening version of the later-period Residents.

The sparse year of 2006 first sees the debut of Masoko, Bubu'7e, a Rome-based quartet devoted to a Diaframma- and Gaznevada-style wave, with touches of punk-funk, applied to a wacky, deranged aesthetic ("Cool", "Ferrari").

Then VedoBeat, released under the name FrancoBeat, is exactly what its title and moniker suggest: a self-analysis of beat poetry, once again relying on lo-fi aesthetics and farcical stylistic excursions. Across this long parade of surrealism, the themes of play and childhood intertwine with alienation, giving rise to a kind of childlike cursedness. The music is a Captain Beefheart- and Todd Rundgren-esque tour-de-force of studio techniques and styles, for voice and backing track, complete with spoken interludes in the form of a dazed monologue.

2007 still boasts a highlight, namely L'arte di sciogliere la neve by Humanoira, a brilliant assemblage of crooked Tortoise-style post-rock, cursed poetry and chamber jazz, but then plummets with La vita sociale by Jet Set Roger, a collection of well-worn stylistic parodies (singer-songwriter, glam, Britpop, etc.). 2008 brings Lavoretto a catena by Andrea "Ance" Lovito, a passionate singer-songwriter capable of ranging from swing to fusion to traditional Italian music, and a Christmas torch song collection by Jet Set Roger presented like a musical (It's Christmas In The Jet Set).

The major event of 2009, aside from Masoko's second album (Masokismo, a far lighter affair than the debut, even poppy in its soft, disco-style electronic arrangements and its broad vocal harmonies and vocal-group trills), is the release of the announced and long-awaited new Maisie album, Balera Metropolitana.

One of the rare double albums in Italian rock, Balera fully frees Maisie from lo-fi, of which no trace remains; if anything, the duo's intent (by now an open group that pushes the Morte band format to its extreme with numerous guest appearances) seems to be to gather the entire canon of Italian song, from Ornella Vanoni to Fabrizio De André, from Fred Bongusto to Marina Rei, from Antonella Ruggiero to Patty Pravo, from Lucio Battisti to Gino Paoli.

Having dropped the poses of experimental showmen, non-sense jokers and faux-sophisticated arrangers, Maisie focus solely and exclusively on the essence of the song form, exploring it across a colossal 2-CD set totalling forty-four tracks. The duo studies it, uses it as a lab specimen, applies reactions to it and observes the results experimentally. The overall style is far removed from their surreal beginnings (perhaps at most surreal-deranged), now indifferent to parody, and closer to a semi-serious, playful delight.

But Balera is only the latest distillation of Snowdonia's essence; it is, so to speak, its advanced stage. The collective's message continues to shine, despite the ups and downs, and despite its strong (and controversial) success within the Italian alternative scene.

The Snowdonia adventure therefore continues to be a genuine "mystery", now more than ever. One cannot help but wonder about the possible developments, the possible nuances, the trajectories - crooked or otherwise - that Scotti and La Fauci's project will decide to take from here into a more or less distant future. Theirs is a fascinating continuing story (perhaps one of the few "family" sagas of Italian indie) that captivates with every new development, every step forward (or backward). Until its resolution (?).

Meanwhile, Snowdonia's 2009 continues with Il nuovo è al passo coi tempi, released under the name K-Conjog (aka Fabrizio Somma, a new jack-of-all-trades space-age popper of Neapolitan origins), a record racing against time that in its first half ties the era of Bruce Haack's primordial analog burlesque-childlike experiments, glued together with Fatboy Slim's big-beat, to the new digital burlesque-childlike sound of Dan Deacon, complete with sample blends, layered backing tracks and old-fashioned legacies.

Then La Vergine e La Rivoluzione by Pulp-Ito, the third record by an obscure combo from Lecco, on one hand revives the erudite-existential splendor of Csi, and on the other ends up sounding like a bland parody of a fertile period in Italian rock.

Omonimo by Deian e l'Orsoglabro (co-produced with Musicalista and Innabilis), the follow-up to the self-released Il Fantasma dell'Impossibile, is the competent attempt of a Turin singer-songwriter - real name Deian Martinelli - who revisits, partly challenging them, vaudeville conventions ("Che ci vuoi fare?", "Medio"), piano-bar blues (the lengthy "nonostante i lampioni", with an experimental horn parade) and pop stereotypes of every kind, all held together by the consistent glue of his deliberately sloppy songwriting.

After this new tour-de-force of releases, 2010 opens with the return of Andrea Tich (more than 30 years after the fairy-tale existentialism of Masturbati, his 1978 debut for the equally legendary Cramps), who on the new Siamo Nati Vegetali gathers songs written during this long hiatus, this time arranging them with the transcendent qualities of electronic keyboards, arriving at Eno-esque ballads such as "Raccontami", "Siamo nati vegetali" and "Vento freddo", techno pulses in "La notte" and "Una storia", languid movements like "Invece di volare", "Il segnale" and "Cinque stagioni", crepuscular moods like "Troppa felicità" and confessions like "Terremoto". His is a song cycle just a couple of steps from a photo album ("Vallì", "Ma ti ricordi"), in which his whispers often give way to voiceless mini-arrangements that complete the narrative with even greater emotion ("Non mi abbandonare" is the most striking example of this).

Le Forbici Di Manitu, after the experimental exploit of L'Infanzia Di M (but also after Tagliare), return with L'Isola, a multi-handed project featuring a surreal love story penned by Alda Teodorani (who also provides the narrating voice), illustrated by Emanuela Biancuzzi in a 40-page booklet included with the CD, alongside the band's accompaniments, at times confused (occasionally creative in their shaping of concrete sound), at times resigned to a more conventional chamber post-rock. The work is worth more for its concept in the broad sense, close to a rock opera - with clear Csi echoes - than for the music itself.

In 2011 the label focuses first of all on two new author-creators: Nicola Sambo (under the moniker N_Sambo), a multi-instrumentalist from Livorno who debuts with Sofa Elettrico, a multicolored, multilayered album relatively unprecedented for Italian rock music, with a section devoted to revisiting the magical powers of applied electronics, and Daniele Scardanelli, who with Il buon senso spiegato al mio cane offers an imaginative, cumulative rear-guard collection of stylistic contrasts that keep the biological clock of cross-pollinated genres ticking rather well ("Salmo", "Kenny 7 dita"), albeit with some occasional calligraphic alignment. Then Fobetore, by the collective Laboratorio Musicale Suono C, is a mysterious pastiche that continues the self-titled debut of two years earlier. Made up of tracks whose titles are anagrams of the album title, it juggles jazz-rock excrescences and Zappa-esque theatrics, then shrinks its ambitions into very brief electronic sketches, and returns to baroque folk sonatas immersed in post-apocalyptic landscapes of silent swamp sounds.

But even more convincing is Il Santuario Della Pazienza, the debut by Lecce's Zweisamkeit, a concentrate of post-post-post-industrial despair fed by discordant elements: the most voracious electro-goa-trance, sporadic whispered monologues, reversed vocals, sonic homage effects, silent minimalist repetitions. One of the most anguished records in Italian post-rock.

For its 2012 releases, Snowdonia focuses first and foremost on two of its specialties: rescuing obscure and forgotten artists with only a single album to their name, as with Il Silenzio del Mondo by Stefano Testa (much like Andrea Tich two years earlier), and launching original acts such as Magic Crashed, aka Fabio Soregaroli, formerly a member of the noteworthy Magic Secret Room, who released material for the same Messina-based label more than a decade before, with Perché Io Lo Sapevo. While the former disappoints, Testa's comeback surprises with its highly mutable production, given to random post-Dadaist events and surrealist outcomes, capable of erasing the image of the politically engaged singer-songwriter of his debut (Una vita, una balena bianca e altre cose, 1977) and reinventing him as a guru of fake, self-sabotaging easy-listening music.

Next comes the second work by Fargas, the project of Modena-based Luca Spaggiari, In Balia di un Dio Principiante, which expands into a full band setup and reignites the vocals and arrangements (across a fairly wide spectrum of styles, including some impeccable quotations), arriving at a cycle of moody, introspective, monologue-like songs, bolstered by inventive production.

At the end of summer, the first true official album by the A.s.o.b. project finally sees the light of day; the project's collaboration with the label actually dates back to at least 2006 (they made a name for themselves with the mini-album Sfriziona Come la Cioccolata), after lengthy production work and troubled line-up changes. Scivola is thus a jumble of traditional songs built on a gently funky rhythm section and multi-part vocal harmonies, which are in fact continually detonated and sabotaged by semi-industrial electronics. The "serious" streak among the Messina label's most recent output is rounded out by L'ombra delle Formiche, the debut of the trio Upon, actually a modest work split between the Dr. Jekyll of sprint-less lounge music and the Mr. Hyde of a rather predictable instrumental post-hardcore.

Fausto Balbo finally follows up the gem that was Falbo with Login, a computer-themed concept album that's even more uncompromising and coldly dark (though not without holograms of robotic Middle Eastern dances), Autechre-esque and close to the ambient mists of Stephen O'Malley.

After a long hiatus, in 2013 the label, in collaboration with Goodfellas, produces the latest album by the Deadburger crew (now renamed Deadburger Factory), a triple box set titled La Fisica delle Nuvole, entirely dedicated to theatrical scores composed over the years by its members — their own Ummagumma. The first CD, Puro Nylon, contains pieces for narrating voices and reprocessed sounds (with very little in the way of purely rock instrumentation), far more adventurous than Isola by Forbici Di Manitù a few years earlier. The second disc comprises two solo EPs: keyboardist Vittorio Nistri's Microonde is a chaotic reckoning of non-musical structures, while guitarist Alessandro Casini's Vibroplettri is a collection of short pieces that rework historic genres in a Dadaist manner. The third disc, meanwhile, is a gallery of ideas kept at low volume and underdeveloped, decidedly less shocking than the rest.

In 2014 the Fargas project runs the now full-band dimension of In Balia at full throttle, but the shorter, quieter Galera is a disappointment, while Andrea Tich adds a new chapter to his sparse discography with the double album Una Cometa di Sangue (which contains largely disparate material, including some songs from the never-released follow-up to Masturbati). Filling the gap is Simone Perna, formerly the drummer for Viclarsen and Affranti, with his debut full-length Rinuncia all'Eredità under the name 3 Fingers Guitar, sung in Italian for the first time, a small tour-de-force of songwriting and composition straddling song form and blues-rock jamming.

The avant-garde front, meanwhile, confirms itself as the label's recent stronghold, and likely its future trend. Recruited into the line-up working on Maisie's Balera, keyboardist Luigi Porto — who already has under his belt the absurdist concept album Mond My My After World (2004) and the meditations released as Appleyard College's Look at Me (2006) — records the multimedia song cycle "The Run-O'-the-Mill" (2014) and, above all, the soundtrack for Romano Scavolini's "L'apocalisse delle scimmie", later collected as Scimmie (2014), a solid catalogue of mixed techniques and tonal blends. Even better is Ukiyoe by NichelOdeon/InSonar, Claudio Milano's project and the latest offspring of his total operetta-vaudevilles: audio-video multimedia, singer-songwriter fare, poetry, jazz, and cultured stylistic devices.

The debut Uri (2015) by Genoa-based researcher Haxel Garbini is a study in tones, timbres and distortions of stethoscopes and overdubs, an unshowy array of concise inventions. Similar in spirit is Nei Shi (2015), the debut of Nei Shi, the moniker concealing Alessandro Petrillo, guitarist and co-founder of Transgender, a short collection of post-rock meditations.

In 2016 there's still room for multimedia projects. Jet Set Roger, having gotten past the mediocre La Vita Sociale, reaches an artistic peak with the narrative rock opera Lovecraft nel Polesine (2016), dedicated to the horror writer's alleged stay in Italy, accompanied by a comic-book "booklet".

In early 2018, Damned Rockstar (2018) by Maisie finally sees the light of day, after announcements, postponements and delays that had in the meantime given it an almost mythical status. Not only in its length and line-up (dozens upon dozens of musicians), but above all in substance, the work expands on the already broad maximalism of its predecessor, Balera. And yet, La Fauci's sharply witty lyrics — outlandish yet elegant and polished — and Scotti's eclectic, moody arrangements sound more firmly in command than ever. The concept centered on "rockstars" is doubly misleading. The targets are overwhelmingly Italian artists and figures: easy-listening singers, as in "Damned Rockstar", a salacious impersonation of Bertè and Fiordaliso; politically engaged singer-songwriters, as in the tour-de-force "Sono sempre i migliori che se ne vanno", an a cappella vaudeville piece that mixes colloquial chat, rap, spoken word and Studio 1-style backing choruses; and VIPs, as in "Folkpolitik". Other stereotypes surface in stylistic detours, the mazurka of "Che fico!", and above all in the most spectacular, bizarre South American dance number, "Ammazza il corvaccio!". Foreign rock artists still get their due, with "Io sono una rockstar", sung in Italian-accented English and laced with a storm of dissonant guitars, and "Ozzy ha un nuovo pantalone", punk-driven with a schizophrenic vocal delivery, part lyrical, part raspy. The album is also misleading in its method of quotation. "Aria" (Sorrenti), "Certe notti" (Ligabue) and "Vincenzina e il Call Center" (Jannacci, also reprised in an excellent industrial-tango version), as well as the electronic "Donna pesce" (Battisti and De Gregori), all share with their original authors only the title and lyrics (grotesque little stories and skits tied to the clichés of each case), while musically they sound like maximalist orchestrations that follow, thin out or overwhelm the vocals. The effect is that of the lavish, sweeping flow of musical theatre and Zappa's sprawling collage-operetta. As if that weren't enough, the concept gradually frays and thins out into something broadly sociological, though the results are, on balance, mixed. Claudio Milano's supple, high-pitched, neurotic voice drives the most powerfully tragicomic moments: he steps in on the very brief, brutal zeuhl of "Un programma politico sintetico", the introduction to the album's dazzling highlight, "Ruderi e macerie #3", seven minutes of free-jazz psychodrama, and crowns the Meat Loaf-esque, post-Sanremo apocalyptic ceremony "Wilma e il diavolo" with a tiny gem of a castrato-like high note amid the shapeless chaos. Just as surprising, though with less energy, is the kitsch skit of voices, little voices and grating voices in "Padre Pio kung-fu master". The final section settles for a somewhat distracted, if intelligent, social commentary, steeped in what, by their standards, amounts to pure entertainment — buoyed at least by "Hyperbaric Rendez-Vous" (the most singable and formulaic track of all, and at the same time one of the most disjointed), the coda of "L'atroce vendetta del nanetto Pingping", an erotic cabaret riddled with the sax's twisted phrases, and a "War!" built on syrupy crooning, radio speeches and hard-rock ravings. More than the most ambitious work of their career, it's a kind of gargantuan summa of the label's aesthetic. Almost thirty years after its release, Epica Etica Etnica Pathos has finally found a worthy heir.

In 2019 the label produces one of the best albums by Caserta's Klippa Kloppa, already on Snowdonia back in the days of the Tottemo Godzilla Riders project, Liberty (2019), thanks to pantomimes cast as garage-rock ("Cinghiali", "Il velo di Omero", "Incido sull'atmosfera") or folk-pop ("Bach", "Lyudmila Pavlichenko", "Alla fine della giostra"), but also electronic rhapsodies like "Cotidie" and "Nature morte" (built on a beat inspired by Dalla's "L'ultima luna"), right up to a sort of personal apotheosis-anthem, "Un mondo migliore" (melodically recalling Fossati's "La musica che gira intorno").

Jet Set Roger repeats the formula of Lovecraft (a narrative rock opera accompanied by a comic by Zograf) with Un Rifugio per la Notte (2020), this time based on Stevenson. The Deadburger Factory crew finally returns with La Chiamata (2020), an album that's almost the polar opposite of its predecessor, built almost entirely on the physicality of groove and geared toward rediscovering, and somewhat renewing, the rock song form, bolstered by a host of guests. Young Trentino singer-songwriter Aldo "Odla" Tanzi debuts with Oltre il Cielo Alberato (2020), supported by Edoardo Vergara's arrangements.

Claudio Milano finally returns with the colossal Incidenti – Lo Schianto (2021), again under the name NichelOdeon/InSonar, although in practice the album is a container for several ensembles, including Not Me and This Order, marking his first foray into metal with the 13-minute single "Ho Gettato Mio Figlio da una Rupe".

The legendary Central Unit, thanks to Snowdonia, keep experimenting with Parallelism (2021), a transmedia project (a music album, a short film and installations curated by Marco Bolognesi).

Maisie complete a kind of trilogy of double albums with 2013-2021 Dal diario di Luigi La Rocca, cittadino (2022). This time their musical and anti-musical encyclopedism makes Todd Rundgren look like a shy beginner: the folk ditties of "13/09/2013 Io dico no alla televisione!", "18/10/2013 Io dico no alla chiesa!", the one leaning toward a dreamlike Mediterranean serenade, "21/10/2013 Io dico no a pagare le tasse per mantenere gli stranieri", and the one sinking into a tribal-electronic ritual, "28/10/2013 Io dico no alla violenza contro agli animali!"; the mix of Parisian chanson and anarchic air that degrades into an industrial march in "01/06/2013 Mio fratello Andrea"; the mix of village brass-band music and carioca dance in "22/09/2013 Pena di Morte!"; the pseudo-orchestral blues of "08/10/2013 Neri"; the sacred hymn of "11/10/2013 Evviva la Cina, evviva i cinesi!"; the nightmarish trip-hop of "30/10/2013 I comunisti"; the dream-pop elegy of "24/12/2013 Mio fratello Andrea si è ammazzato"; the ramshackle funk-piano anti-anthem of "06/01/2015 Un uomo è troppo solo senza un amico vero!"; the deconstructed piano-bar of "16/04/2016 Io dico sì ai matrimoni degli omosessuali e agli uteri in affitto!"; the dissonant choral sabbath of "07/05/2016 Un sogno troppo brutto!"; the pulverizing garage-rock of "10/09/2016 Tornatore spacca il culo!"; the novelty tune interrupted by a vanishing minimalism in "05/10/2016 L'iPhone è una cosa bella e molto importante!"; the acoustic blaxploitation-style jam of "02/03/2018 A chi dare il voto?"; the Haitian soundscape of "10/03/2018 Sugli stranieri sto cambiando completamente idea"; the psychedelia in the vein of Jefferson Airplane on "10/04/2018 L'apericena"; the brass-band number "01/11/2018 Le cose di marca"; the Kraftwerk-esque synth-pop of "14/01/2019 Io 'sto fatto che si deve amare la patria proprio non lo capisco"; the "serial" music of "Ho visto un film che c'era Mel Gibson", "21/09/2019 Persone e cose che mi piacciono e non mi piacciono" and "24/12/2019 Ciao Andrea, mi vedi da lassù in paradiso?"; the android collages of "28/09/2019 Greta, la geniale bambina svedese che salverà il pianeta!"; the post-Ustmamò canticle of "09/04/2020 Questa emergenza Coronavirus" and the post-Swingle Singers one of "19/05/2020 E' finita la quarantena!". These sprawling titles reach a comic paroxysm in a handful of just a few seconds long, an exasperation of the pairing between title-as-caption and instrumental pieces from Battisti's Amore e non amore, such as, among others, the 10-second percussive jingle titled "09/06/2018 Non so se mi piace più come una volta comprare le cose al centro commerciale, forse adesso preferisco Amazon che è più moderno e pratico. I also wanted to say that Netflix is wonderful: I discovered it recently and I've already fallen way too in love with it!". But rather than a collection of genres, sub-genres and post-genres, this Moloch of an album immediately shows itself as a whole with the status of a monologue rock opera: the punk'n'roll duet "15/10/2013 Oggi un comunista su Facebook" is a prime example, as are "25/05/2018 Cetty, ti amo!" and "07/10/2018 Olviero Toscani, il più grande fotografo!". At its center, more than the man-in-the-street Luigi La Rocca himself, lie the logorrhea and graphorrhea of his "diary"; indeed, the album has no development to speak of, nor does it seek one. Its exposition always has something frontal about it, deliberately flattened. If stylistically it seems driven by dissonance, aesthetically it takes its cue from the continuous-stream mode of social networks, ultimately rising to the level of a collective stream of consciousness-unconsciousness and political testament — an ironically detached (and therefore venomous) form of agit-prop. The symbolic value of the whole is even stronger. The duo fills a void, perhaps even a chasm, of apocryphal Italian pseudo-historiography (spanning almost a decade, quite randomly, of course), ultimately exposing an even bigger void: that of contemporary art, an art too often reduced to feeble, hesitant, timid captioning. As "01/05/2013 Il sistema è corrotto, marcio, fa schifo al cazzo!" attests and foreshadows — a variety-show dance-rock number that is, in fact, an avant-garde jazz-rock masterpiece worthy of the Mothers Of Invention (as are also "17/09/2013" and "12/11/2014") — the duo and their host of collaborators follow in Zappa's footsteps in his colossal project of deeply mocking political correctness, updating it and ultimately assembling a new vocabulary of quotations, "found" phrases, mottos, improbable mosaics of opinions, gut-level notions, right down to social-media squabbles, the worship of new populist little leaders, new dogmas, and so on — all to highlight the vast gulf between social-media individualism and reality. It is a necessary record, sic et simpliciter.

Avvolgistanti (2022) is the second album by Turin-based Luca Borgia.

After a long gestation, Ossi finally sees the light: the side project of two Deadburger members – Vittorio Nistri and Simone Tilli – rounded out by a super-trio of Domenico "Dome La Muerte" Petrosino, Andrea Appino and Bruno Dorella. The self-titled Ossi (2022) feels somewhat perishable, an uncertain sociopolitical commentary on the current era dressed up as garage revival and rhythm'n'blues. It opens, programmatically, with a collage of shouted, foul-mouthed political statements ("Ventriloquist Rock"), and the content that follows is much the same story: from the garage-punk of "Ricariche" to the half-tribute to the Monks in "Monk Time", from the acid-industrial "Hasta la sconfitta" to the goliardic sketch-comedy of "Miss tendopoli", from the hymn-like "Naturalmente non possiamo pagarti" (somewhere between techno-rave and hard rock) to the folk-punk of "'O pisciaturu", it all comes across as a string of coarse, sometimes vulgar slogans. When actual songs finally arrive, the exercise turns oleographic: "Per sollevare il morale del capo" remixes the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" (turning it into an exotic jam) and "Out Demons Out" simply redoes Edgar Broughton's classic, stretched out to 9 minutes. The long-playing is worth it mostly for its artwork and comic-strip inserts.

Belle Epoque (2023), the second album by Rome's Aguirre, showcases the Scotti-La Fauci outfit's genuine passion for classic Italian songwriting of a sturdy, subtly demented and blithely carefree kind.

2024 is largely devoted to the new projects of Claudio Milano. Having moved past the melting pot of "Incidenti", the "cantattore" turns to more focused collaborative vocal-chamber recitals, recorded live above all to keep his improvisational verve intact.

The soundtrack to the one-act piece "Inferno 1911" (2023), later recorded on Decimo Cerchio (2024) with Sincopatici, is through and through a vocal-and-acting tour de force: from the mournful, electric-piano-laced air of "Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave", to the demonic electronic sketches of "Per me si va nella città dolente" and "Il conte Ugolino", to the breathless singing-and-reciting of "Pier Della Vigna", right up to the recital-within-a-recital of "Il cammino sotterraneo". The crossover between grotesque declaimed monologue and Byzantine/Indian-tinged accompaniment in "L'angoscia delle genti" makes him sound like a Tim Buckley fronting the Third Ear Band, but his is also an art of balancing acts between parts, of stylistic chiaroscuro and shifting registers, starting with pieces like "Stige", an almost purely instrumental trifle, and the fragment "I dilapidatori", a dissonant collective improvisation. Aboriginal trances can thus be subjected to effect-laden upheavals and fade-outs ("Amor che a nullo amato"), electro-Gregorian vocal drones get accompanied by a macabre glockenspiel ("I traditori"), and avant-garde numbers rise up to become the whole work's centre of gravity ("Qui sono gli eresiarchi"). When the saraband picks up drums, the only concessions to a more conventional gothic rock emerge ("Lucifero", "La terza Bolgia", "I barattieri"). The singer and his companions do a distinctive job of holding together a work that is, by definition, wildly varied.

For Quigyat (2024), a collaboration with the electronics of Teo Ravelli (aka borda) and a concept centred on war, he brings back the NichelOdeon moniker. The title track (9 minutes), opening with helicopter-like cosmic music, moving through a Schoenbergian piano sonata, agitator-like tones and lashes of electronics, builds up a gothic tension that finally erupts in a closing solo of aboriginal diplophonic vocalisations. The rest consists mainly of older pieces performed live and then reprocessed in the studio. The reissue of "Alla statua dei martiri di Gorla" splits itself between a plaintive Vangelis-esque ambient-jazz fantasy and a freeform lied-nursery-rhyme (complete with a shrill peak that dissolves into the void). With the 9-minute version of "Ciò che rimane", the work's suspended, piano-and-electronics nature continues, but now with the added touch of a rhythm section drifting towards chaos.

Paolo Zangara of Hikobusha makes his solo debut with the shadowy, Modugno-tinged pop ballads, markedly streaked with light jazz, of "Studio 1" and Scusi dov'è il bar (2024). Among the most notable are the dreamy, danceable "Parole", the elegant "Silenzi irrequieti" and the big-band-flavoured "Una corsa".

The collaboration between Filippo Nistri of Deadburger and Filippo Panichi (which began some time earlier with the electro-cacophonous poem "Aibofobia") takes shape on Vittorio Nistri Filippo Panichi (2024), an album of composed library music.

The return of Paolo Rigotto (of the historic Syndone, as well as Banda Elastica Pellizza and Freak-Out Band) with Compost (2024), one of his best, includes the circus-like, Paolo Conte-esque, gypsy-and-Jamaican-flavoured anthem "Spacca tutto", some of his sci-fi nursery rhymes such as "Binari" and "Momento onirico", and the folk whirlwind of "Senza un fine".

Borgia splendidly picks back up the sonic alchemy of his feminine guitar work on Fotosintesi (2025), the soundtrack to Francesco Rei's docufilm "Pellizza pittore da Volpedo" (2024), while Mazzocca's personal saga under the name Klippa Kloppa adds a new chapter with Bijoux (2025).

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google