https://www.inelektramusic.com
https://industrialcoast.bigcartel.com/product/in-elektra-shimmering-behaviour
https://inelektra.bandcamp.com/releases
Play.Stop. Fast-forward. Pause. Rewind.
Forgotten gestures. I haven’t bought a cassete in over thirty years. And to listen to it I had to resurrect my dear old vintage Sony Walkman, yes, the Victorian forerunner of the ipods, a technology made in the ’80s that by now might sound nice to steampunk lovers. For what ? What the hell: for Silvia Cignoli and Valentina Guidugli, respectively electric guitar and electric bass, more effects and various electronics of the IN/ELEKTRA duo. For their album debut, in fact, the two dynamic girls have chosen the most ancient, ignoble and inept audio support in an era of triumphant hi-tech. A provocation, certainly, but also a tribute. And not only to the heroes of the 80’s industrial culture to which their label, the Industrial Coast, refers, but to a whole era, to a kind of childhood where being informed was a complicated and complex affair, when the tape was still the only(poor) alternative to expensive vinyl productions. A childhood that, perhaps, Silvia and Valentina have not lived.
Play.Stop. Fast-forward. Pause. Rewind.
Put the tape on and listen to it, get to the end, turn the tape, rewind it to get to the B side start and press Play again. A forgotten game. An almost ontological game, a contrast with the avangarde music enclosed in this obsolete format. A form of reversed hauntology for those who have not played these tapes in their time.
Play.Stop. Fast-forward. Pause. Rewind.
What kind of music IN/ELEKTRA plays? Industrial? No. Shimmering Behavior shows a common horizon, a plateux of sounds where the key word is “contamination” between post-rock music, noise, drone-ambient, glitch, contemporary, experimental and improvised. Here there is a confused sense of a reappropriation of the imaginary, which again is quotation, recovery, unearthing of the repressed and fascination for primitive, archaic forms, overcome by the times, which are however mixed up in an elegant form and with a strong, tense sound, where it’s sometimes difficult to understand who is playing what and that exudes an intense and captivating energy.
They are very good. They know what they want and they get it. The sound is really fantastic, it doesn’t sound good in my Walkman, (to hell with that noise) but I can imagine it in a different context. Congratulations to (Andrea Tremolada) Draane’s valuable work in the studio. Debut album 100% recommended.
Play.Stop. Fast-forward. Pause. Rewind.
NeuGuitars 