My Cat Is An Alien

My Cat Is An Alien entered The Space Room in October 2000 and recorded a dark and concrete improvisation; previously released on LP, stretched over two sides of vinyl, it is restored here to its original state as a 30-minute monolith of caustic ruination. Beginning with a gloomy text entitled "The Sign" written by guitarist / lyricist Roberto Opalio, the track comes out of the smog with brother Maurizio's desolate, acoustic guitar scratches, Roberto's electric space guitar scribbles and spat-out words of urban alienation, and Viggiu Vortex on percussion. Piano toy and toy keyboard were added later to enhance the surreal lyrics inspired by ghosts, a sense of psychic, cultural and social isolation in their hometown Torino, Italy, and the infinite lightness and beauty between the cement and the sky. Il Segno is about the mark of chance, avenues full of dust and fallen leaves, the Torino skyline's abandoned factories and chimneys with the mountains all around, and the dance of swallows at twilight, just before the darkness envelops everything. 
 
This CD reissue also has 23 minutes of extra screech—a pair of previously unreleased tracks recorded during the same sessions. 
 
“[F]airly staggering … dominated by the reading of ‘The Sign’—a bleak poem of alienation, nothingness, futility and despair … snarled by Roberto in broken, halting phrases, sounding for all the world like Alan Vega on skag. As he wanders through a desolate cityscape, the poet finds manifestations of his misery in everything he sees—street signs, broken windows, malfunctioning lights. It’s a downer—a real paean to disconnectedness. Behind this recital is joyless, endless drone of guitar sound, a whirling sensation of electric guitar strings strummed by a machine-like robot hand.… [A]s dystopic sound-visions of the future (and the present) go, it’s pretty much unsurpassed.… Far from psychedelic in outlook, their music is pure heroin music—wretched, strung-out, endlessly painful and emaciated. Good stuff!” 
—Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector