Psycho Kinder – Epigrafe

Italian artist Alessandro Camilletti aka Psycho Kinder is a musician known for his fusion of post-punk, spoken-words, alternative, electronic music, industrial tinged experiments. In the past his music employed heavy use of guitar sounds and almost theatrical atmospheres.

Epigrafe is a peculiar effort for the project, more of a collaborative effort in the spirit of some works from Laibach of late. Here Camilletti’s words are layered upon music produced by Moreno Padoan, Michele Casera, Giovanni Leonardi and Valeria Cevolani, Celery Price, Giorgio Mozzicafreddo and power electronics/industrial legend Maurizio Bianchi.

Some of the people involved are collaborators from the past, some new blood. The result forfeits guitar sounds and easy structures, using droning electronic sounds, ominous soundscapes and noise moments as weapons of choice.

Tape 1 sees sparse glimpses and fractured IDM elements upon which whispered vocals create an uneasy atmosphere full of hidden tension and dream-like moments. During the second half of the track the noise elements become more prominent without indulging in total chaos.

Tape 3 dwells in minimal electronics sounds full of echoes from 70’s experimentalism, a synth-based work where the voice talks about the daily routine of a working day. Accordingly, the music is obsessive and monotonous, a looping nightmare with an unsettling vibe.

Tape 4 sounds as a score from a movie, a collection of orchestral lines and mysterious, poetic female vocals. A calm but somewhat eerie sounds guide us through ghostly ambiances, until the tension grows with droning distortions and shouted vocal deliveries.

Tape 8 ends our journey with the words of Carlo Michelstaedter, a writer and philosopher who died of suicide when he was 23, accompanied by shrilling and factory-like sounds which orchestrate a sort of symphonic noise track with mutant organs. An almost acid experience perfectly encapsulating paranoia and spiritual malaise.

Epigrafe is a work born of the current world-wide situation and especially Italy’s one, from isolation, fear, uncertainty, loss of control in one’s life. It reeks of days spent in a paranoid atmosphere, in reflection upon existential dread and the real nature of our daily lives. It doesn’t want to be an easy work and it isn’t. But an attentive listening experience will offer the soundtrack for our own reflections and battles against what lurcks at the edge of our minds.

Release dsate: October 29th, 2020.

Text by: Davide Pappalardo