My Cat Is An Alien With Nels Cline

The idea of a recording collaboration by Nels Cline and My Cat Is An Alien was born one day in Torino, Italy, while Cline was touring with Wilco in 2007. After two other intersections of their respective orbits (first at Victoriaville, then at a UK All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in 2006), Cline eventually mailed them a CDR of prepared and heavily effected electric guitar improvisations, recorded in a small studio in Los Angeles. He tossed them off with little concern about exactly what would happen to the recordings, though his familiarity with i fratelli Opalio and their work steered the technically proficient jams familiar to fans of Nels Cline Singers, Scarnella or L. Stinkbug deep into zones of space noise, bold cosmic disruptions and nattering squibs from decommissioned satellites.  
Exploiting the carte blanche they were given to do whatever they wanted with his recordings, Maurizio and Roberto Opalio opted to maintain as much as possible the spirit of free improv and instantaneous composition; Cline’s recording remained unheard until the actual recording session in 2012. Upon recognizing the planets were in proper alignment, Roberto and Maurizio’s Alien Zone studio in the Western Alps vibrated with the first playback of the CDR and My Cat Is An Alien’s simultaneous real-time accompaniment, without overdubs or outtakes. 
The results throb like an Argento soundtrack for an astral perv lair, recalling vintage cassette gorp from the golden age of industrial, when field recordings of howling dogs were repurposed as documents of institutional degradation and mind control. Dusted with loops from a lunar cathedral where palsied zombies dragging pots and pans skid across the soap-slathered narthex, The Ocean Above Your Heads splays the hemispheres better than Subotnik goin’ off his meds.