Music writer, Chris Parkin, takes a dip into the music and festival scene in Milan in this week's Indie Music Blog...
Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi’s recent homage to Italian film music, Rome, shifted attention away from cities up north near the Alps. But while it’s true that Rome’s prog bands and film score composers – illustrious names such as Goblin and Ennio Morricone – will ensure vinyl junkies and fans of esoteric music go all misty-eyed for the capital, Milan has its own heritage to be proud of.
It’s where some of the earliest codified music in Western culture comes from and the city’s music conservatory educated luminaries such as Giacomo Puccini and Ludovico Einaudi. But like many cities in northern Italy there’s an industrial feel to the place, which has an effect on the noises emerging from there in much the same way Birmingham produced a lot of grinding, oily metal.
In the 90s, Milan was a breeding ground for a strangely stylish, sex mad and uber threatening Italian hip-hop – the most popular rapper being Articolo 31 – and right now the city is throwing more warehouse parties than disco-era New York. Its inhabitants seem also to be extremely fond of experimental electronic music and noise compositions played on instruments such as pneumatic drills. What visiting F1 fans will make of that we’re not entirely sure.
First, there’s the Kernel Festival, which took place on the outskirts of Milan in Desio for the first time in July. Held at the town’s Villa Tittoni Traversi, the three-day event is a high concept thing that attempts to link electronic sound with digital and interactive art, audiovisual mapping (whatever that is) and temporary architecture.
The bill, which they’ll be hoping to surpass in 2012, featured a who’s who of international electronic mavericks, most of them dystopian-sounding in nature. Minimal techno man Shed was there along with the Mortiz Von Oswald Trio – the slinky, minimal threesome led by the founder of Basic Channel – DJ Spooky and UK dubstep linchpin Kode9. And there’s hardly a dearth of homebred Milan-based noisemakers either. Joining the bill were 8bit musician Tonylight, wonky electronicist Mother Inc, local drone-folk outfit The Bizarre Collection and sonic artist Marco Donnarumma.
Another Milan festival is Elita, an event closely associated with the annual design week that’s held every April. It also veers to the leftfield, though not quite as deeply as Kernel. Past performers include Pantha Du Prince, UK Mercury Prize nominee Jon Hopkins, Mouse on Mars and more. There’s the Magnolia Parade too, an event we’ve missed by a week and which shows off the city’s musically on-trend tendencies with famous bands such as Mogwai DJing alongside live sets from obscure noiseniks and electro-punks.
Bolstering the city’s increasing presence on Europe’s avant-garde/leftfield scene are venues such as Fondazione Arnoldo Pomodoro, which books acts like Einsturzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld and heavenly electronicist Christian Fennesz. Plus Milan’s label/distribution project SoundOHM – a one-stop shop for synapse-frying noise and spaced-out drones.
And for fans of music that most people will argue isn’t really music, it’s never too long before Turin’s premier cosmic rockers My Cat is An Alien drop by to unleash their hypnotic grooves, static drones, spontaneous compositions and odd blend of audio visual art performed on electric and acoustic guitars, toy instruments they call 'space toys' and ‘alientronics'. Just to give you an idea of what they’re like before you hit play below and have your ears burned, they’ve worked with Sonic Youth, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Nels Cline and Mats Gustafsson in the past. Basically, they’re noisier than an F1 starting grid.
Want more?
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