Mai Mai Mai

Phi

Not Not Fun

MC $6.75

11/18/2016 647603396446

NNF 332

MP3 $5.94

11/18/2016 647603396446

FLAC $6.99

11/18/2016 647603396446

Roman noise omnivore Toni Cutrone aka Mai Mai Mai names his poisonous, punishing electronic miasmas after characters of the Greek alphabet, beginning with Theta in 2013 and followed by Δέλτα (Delta) in 2014. Φ (Phi) is the third and final installment in his Mediterranean trilogy, pushing the project deeper into a vivid interzone of digital synthesis and scorched ritual. The album opens with a searing collaboration with avant-folk instrumentalist Luca Venitucca, locked into a lofty duel of distorted drones, before pivoting to a throbbing oblivion of jackhammer bass, seething feedback, and combat samples. Later passages ooze through industrial spoken word, technoid voodoo hallucination, seasick prayer loops, and nightmare exotica, assisted in places by Italian experimental percussion legend Lino Capra Vaccina (of 1970’s “golden age” groups Aktuala and Telaio Magnetico). Cutrone ascribes a degree of his maximalist tendencies to a rootless youth packed with parents through Europe and the Near East, absorbing fragments of sensation and sound, but his own decade-plus experience in the Italian underground has doubtless played a role as well. Intensity accrues, patience decays. Closure is its own reward. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Hombrelobo Studio by V. Fisik. Artwork and design by LEGNO; photography by Ilaria Doimo.