my cat is an alien

Strangely enough our cat Dylan (or Tig as he appears to be still used to being called even now – a name afforded by his previous owners because he has tiger like markings?! – funny how cat owners have a remarkable knack for unimaginative names – like snowy, tabby, cat – as an old acquaintance used to call his to save confusion though just between you and me I reckon the cat thought its name was fuck off on account of the constant cries each time it came into view) has spent the best part of the first side of this platter perched at my feet looking up at the laptop ears a pricked almost hypnotically frozen. I refer in case your wondering – and you are – unless you can mind read – to the recent ’pop’ platter ’alien, all too alien’ by my cat is an alien via trensmat. Came out a while back, pressed on white vinyl in extremely limited numbers, long since sold out and no doubt to source of brisk business on various online auction sites. Been an age since we had anything by MCIAA to rave about, the Opalio brothers are the improv psych experimental royalty of Italy, boasting a 15 year recording career spanning over 100 releases, they have worked with the aristocracy of outsider sounds. ’Alien, all too Alien’ is comprised of 2 elongated suites – well in essence one but split in order to accommodate the vinyl groove limitations I suspect. Cosmic concrete, folk drone, outsider freeform call it what you like but whatever the case there’s a betting that unless you tune variously into the worlds of no neck blues band or sunburned hand of the man not forgetting the kind of stuff kicked out by reverb worship imprint in their early years that your not going to be prepared for what trips out here. A positive flurry of busying activity, there’s gongs, scalping riff fracturing, chimes creating the kind of oblique atmospheric tension that usual adorns the work of Philippe Petit, the onset of silvery shimmers court an unearthly disquiet that suggests this has been plucked from some pre-natural primordial ooze. But still it evolves, shape shifting upon some evolutionary arc and blending in monastic chorals until layer by layer building in density and depth so that it gets quite disturbing and just a tad ominous especially with the appearance of eerie earth beat codas and is it just me or does it detour in to ‘flowers of romance’ flashbacks. Absolutely fried. Over the flip the process sustains only this time as though relocated onto super hyper galactic space craft – or more specifically inside its console command, whirring drones mask a deliciously wood crafted twilight like daydream psych folk motif, the mood very woozy purrs into transcendental states the flat lining drone accents taking prime presence for a while until everything converges in a blur amid a blitz of skree interference. Guaranteed to upset neighbours and be greeted by puzzled looks aplenty.