MAURIZIO MARSICO - The Sunny Side Of The Dark Side

The Italian 1980s were the years of Milano da bere, that contradictory decade of unbridled hedonism and lost innocence for a country that - having emerged from the armed political struggles of the Seventies - was trying to step into a future of prosperity and carefree detachment; a short-lived dream destined to shatter miserably with the arrival of the Tangentopoli scandal.

It was in this scenario that Milanese multi-instrumentalist Maurizio Marsico came of age, a pioneer of Italian disco-pop and author of a multifaceted, many-sided career capable of moving effortlessly from the most accessible disco to the avant-garde or chamber music, from eccentric Residents-style collages to collaborations with Andrea Tich, from new wave escapades to ambient experimentation ("Il sole visto dal cielo" - 1994), all the way to a collaboration with the great director David Cronenberg ("Stereo" - 1998). Marsico's career begins right at the dawn of the decade, between Milan and New York, with the release of two albums under the name Monofonic Orchestra - "Music Design" (1981) and "Friends' Portraits" (1981) - which show generous doses of irony and irreverence; a crooked, fragmented italo-disco packed with such a quantity of sketched-out ideas as to leave the listener bewildered. Those ideas are children of Marsico's own era, yet they don't hide his academic training or his other interests (avant-garde, noise).

"The Sunny Side Of The Dark Side" collects the best, hidden moments (some tracks are previously unreleased) of that season and stands as a kind of almost celebratory memento of an era and an Italy that no longer exist. The compilation contains tracks recorded under the names Monofonic Orchestra, The Space Boys, Fontana and Frisk The Frog, as well as collaborations with Stefano Tamburini. This is a Marsico (described as a comic-strip character made flesh) celebrating himself and recalling a phase of his life that also saw him appear on national television, on Serena Dandini's show "Obladì Obladà" on Rai Uno.

Today, admittedly, various moments on the album feel like a kind of time travel, children of a season now over ("Funk Sumatra", "Silver Surfin"), yet they still reveal a musician capable of a bold, fragmented career, deliberately concealed behind a myriad of projects under different names. Products of long Milanese nights spent playing are the screamed post-punk deliriums of "Ta Ki Ta" or the crossovers of "Rap'n'Roll", the off-key doo-wop of "Tongue In Cheek Giulia" and the repetitive piano patterns of the loopy "Lucy's 1st Appointment".

Quite different tones can be found in the smooth horns of "Lunatica You" and in the raw wave experiment of "Luce bianca rumore bianco". For anyone wanting to rediscover a lesser-known corner of the Italian underground scene, "The Sunny Side Of The Dark Side" is an excellent starting point.

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22/02/2017