Boring Machines keeps on plumbing the depths of remarkably rich Italian underground bands and this time it manages to recover one of the most gloomy band from the bottom with the support of Avant! Records. Named after the notorious English tongue twister "How Much Wood Would A Woodchuck Chuck If A Woochuck Could Chuck Wood?", this Turin-based trio articulates a gloomy and somewhat oppressive sound which manages to avoid a certain sloppiness and superficiality many "damned" musicians usually succumb to when they try to mold their own musical language from inside an imaginary grotto by pouring more or less esoteric musical references, quotes, borrowings, devilments and identity crisis in their melting pot. Even if Ghier, Coccolo and female voice Iside pile the above-mentioned items and could be associated to some listening memories of stuff from Current 93 or Swans by an anamnesis on listener's side more than from the side of the band, whose choice of a charred firebrand, which could grossly resemble a maimed trunk, on a black field for the cover artwork of their self-titled debut release, give hints to listeners about the stylistical autopsy they made on dark folk corpse. The sense of paralysis coming from the slackening guitars, which keep on playing exhausted simple melodic lines, the Mephistophelean voice, whose occasional mock-tragic fomenting never result in demential declensions of some "poete maudits", the sinister appearance of sullen reverbs and low frequencies don't entail the surfacing of some transient epic moment, which stigmatize the best moments of the release - the charming chasms of "In Aria", the cryptic hibernation of "The Rock", which include some hieratic quotes from T.S.Eliot's pageant play with the same name, or the ominous obsessions of "For Nobody", outlines the portrait of a certain authenticity in spite of the consumed barks they've chosen to wrap their simple melodies, as if they had to mirror the tangled disguise of the underlying meaning of a tongue twister...

Horror Vacui are a band who formed recently in Bologna, Italy. The band members are coming from the crust/hardcore scene (see the bands Kontatto, Campus Sterminii and Sumo) and fascinated by 80s goth and punk rock, decided to "release the bats" and to play mixing elements of Sisters of Mercy, Lords of the New Church and a bit of Misfits, I'd say. Their first album "In Darkness You Will Feel Alright" has just been co-produced by Avant! and band's own Legion of the Dead (sublabel of Agipunk). Opening with the classic "Rosemary's Baby" theme, the album starts off with "Black Rivers" a powerful 4/4 track with tribal drums, strong guitar riffs and bouncing flanger bass guitar lines just to keep on going on a similar track until the end of the album. Personally I've nenver been a fan of goth aesthetic and I think that it's really difficult for a nowaday's band to succeed into re-defining a genre which is so rooted to a specific period and I don't see it possible to revive something like the Batcave scene or so. Horror Vacui, to me, sound powerful and melodic but I don't find them catchy. For sure it's my fault and it's possible that I'm missing something but to my ears their sound isn't fresh. Since it's only a question of taste, you can make your own opinion by checking their album at the label's Bandcamp page at http://avantrecords.bandcamp.com/album/horror-vacui-in-darkness-you-will-feel-alright-lp

Active on early 80s in Rome, Italy, Style Sindrome was formed by Anna and Stefano, both coming from TM Spa, a rock band that won the first Italian Rock Festival in 1980 and Giorgio, who played with Electroshock, a well known Italian rock band active in the late '70s. The line-up found its final set up when Massimo and Raimondo joined. Deeply influenced by post punk and early new wave (of the likes of Joy Division, The Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees), the band recorded only two demo tapes (the song "Waving In The Dark", coming from the second one, was also included into the compilation produced by the magazine Rockerilla titled "Gathered"). They also participated to a national television show called Mister Fantasy with a video produced by the show itself. For whom may be unaware of that show, it was a sort of experiment lasted from 1981 until 1984 born from an idea of Paolo Giaccio and hosted by Carlo Massarini. It was the first show based on video clips but they also documented different Italian local scenes (Pordenone's The Great Complotto it's the one I remember the most) and produced many italian bands and artists' videos. After thirty years Synthetic Shadows succeeded into getting a copy of the seven songs of the two demos which seemed to be lost forever. Side A contains "Thinking About", "We Two" and "Pressing Desire". The influences of bands like Siouxsie & The Banshees are mostly evident on Stefania's vocal style because musically they had refined arrangements where sax inserts and intricate guitar parts where the main elements and the atmosphere was sensual and dark at the same time. Side B contains "Waving In The Dark", "Shining", "To Stretch" and "A Mysterious design". The songs are mixing new wave upbeat rhythms to almost funky guitar riffs, new wave arpeggios and sax solos. They succeeded into personalizing a sound that revolutionize the alternative musical scene over the world on that period, if you think that on those years Siouxsie & The Bansheed released "Juju" and "A Kiss In The Dreamhouse", The Cure released "Faith" and "Pornography" and Factory just issued the posthumous Joy Division's record "Still".

The small Italian label Santos Productions by Davide Fernia manages to erect a monumental sonic mausoleum dedicated to big names of history, politics or culture, whose lives are somewhat memorable whether right or wrong, by involving some of the most renowned (mainly) Italian representatives and explorers of grey interzone, who offer an impressive collection of various facets of this obscure and unconventional scene, whose stylistical ground lies on tape and noise art, post-industrial, electronic experiments, dark ambient, neo-folk, ritual ambient as well as on a fertile humus of occult subjects, paganism, underground cultures, futurism, political activism and so on. This 17-tracks compilation of "requiems" opens with "Le 516 volte di Giovanni" ("The 516 times by Giovanni") by Massimo Olla's project Noisedelik, whose sinister rasps on guitar strings, noises of chains, grinding blades, metallic objects and coughs which seem to come from filthy wet prison cells become more and more claustrophobic and obsessive like the imminent execution by the hands of the character whom this track refers, Giovanni Battista Bugatti, commonly known as Mastro Titta, the cruel official executioner for the Papal States in the first half of XIX century, who carried out 516 executions. That's a sticking way to start this commemoration, which carries on with memorable memorials. All tracks include proper sonic hints and quotes by the personalities they referred to so that it's almost impossible to state an "order of preference" as well as a dissertation about each memorial could be excessively rambling. Anyway there are some tracks which struck me more, but such a list cannot be considered thorough at all: ofr instance I found particularly catchy the treatment LCHM and KHEM reserved on "Neo Mondo" to a reading by Pier Paolo Pasolini of some excerpts from Ezra Pound's "The Pisan Cantos" with the quotation of the known verse "What thou lovest well remains, / the rest is dross", the psychotropic evocation Simon Balestrazzi offers on "The Airtight Garage of Jean Giraud (Requiem for Moebius)", the guessed industrial anxiety on "Crunch/Grind Mechanism" by Automageddon in order to remember the controversial General Ludd, the memory glimpses of some literary climax by Danilo Kis while listening to the tribute by Maurizio Bianchi, Stefano Gentile and Gianluca Favaron, the touching dark folk song dedicated to Ota Benga by TSIDMZ and Rose Rovine e Amanti, the synaesthetic sonic remembrance of the brave deeds by Ukrainian anarcho-communist revolutionary Nestor Makhno on "Tacianka Armata" by Brigata Stirner, the scary abrasions by Uncodified for his homage/memorial to Italian witty film director Lucio Fulci or the ripping dedication by meand of headbanging reading within a storm of noises to the innovative aesthaetics of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima by The Streetcleaner and Troy Southgate, but I cannot but reaffirm such a list doesn't justice to other sound artists, who gave their precious contribution to the general impressiveness of the project.

I met The Prostitutes in the mid 80s, after their participation to the "Tracce" compilation with "Soldier". Their music was passionate and cold at the same time and it sounded just like the Velvet Underground could have sounded to a teenager in the late 60s. On mid 80s I followed them live as they held different concerts into my region (they were coming from the same city of mine... Torino, Italy) and they were dedicating them to the death of Jean Genet who just died. At that time I wasn't aware that the members of the band had the monkey on their back and only after reading the book "Fedeli alla roba" (Loyal to the stuff) wrote by Bruno Panebarco I got a glimpse of what music meant to them. Augusto and Bruno Panebarco were living a decadent life and The Prostitutes and the music in general someway was a way to keep them alive. Active since late 70s, The Prostitutes were incarnating the anarchy of the poets sounding like razor cuts on a wrist. They did't officially recorded much stuff, they only had few tracks on some compilations and released for Snowdownia (the fanzine and later label that my brother Marco run back then) a tape. Most of the tapes they recorded were unofficial releases that they hardly distributed and that were containing recordings they did in their basement. Unfortunately this compilation released by the new label Synthetic Shadows Records doesn't contain any song of the Snowdonia tape but in any case is a good introduction to the world of The Prostitutes of the early 80s period. Side A has the three songs they did for compilations ("Soldier", "Democracy" and "Glaube Nichts" were on "Tracce", "Tracce 85" and "Ti Dico Demo" respectively) plus a couple of tracks from the aforementioned gigs ("Tiny D" and "Keep On Wasting Away") where you can get the idea of their energy and their charisma. Side B has two more live tracks ("European Idol" and "Time") plus three tracks, of which two new ones recorded by Augusto. These new tracks sound less post punk compared to the old ones but for sure they have that "over the edge" crazy touch. Just listen to "Ditirambici Tiranti" with that nervous piano line and that voice which recall an "Alice In Wonderland" character. "Strollin' Troll" is a song recorded in the basement, I don't know when but it sounds like Velvet Underground meets Television and it's a good noisy one. The second new song is "Pezzo Rock" that is a rock cavalcade with a noise touch, sung in Italian (it's the first Italian lyric I knew they ever wrote). This is a nice introduction to a band that deserve to be known from a wider audience. I just hope that this compilation will sell enough to persuade the label to reissue other stuff by The Prostitutes!