My Awesome Mixtape
My Lonely And Sad Waterloo

This here is not an album, it's an emblematic case of the pseudo-Italian indie scene.

We are probably talking about the most fabricated phenomenon of the Italian network which ranges from Myspace to Rockit; the attention of blogs was captivated, and chatter fell like an avalanche on this guy with an afro hairstyle and nerd glasses, a proud bearer of the geek flag, a manifesto of how being a “loser” is so cool in a music scene that has no market, no real popular feedback, and over which always looms the shadow of something unclear or implausible.

The Story:

In December 2006, Maolo Torreggiani, brother of Emilio from Settlefish, on an afternoon when he was bored at his home in Bologna, instead of studying philosophy books, sat in his room tinkering with a couple of groove boxes. A couple of songs came out which he wisely decided to slap onto his Myspace, inventing a band from scratch. That's the beauty of technology; any music amateur can study a synth manual or something similar, tinkering with fruity loops. Thank god for patterns, just as web page templates exist.

Legend has it that not even a month passed before Kirsten's Postcard noticed him among the millions of bands seeking attention in that frightening Myspace bazaar (it’s usually like this, no REAL artist sends their tracks around; labels practically rain down on them), they were immediately struck by the tracks (recorded in a mediocre way, as only someone working at home on their ordinary PC could), and offered him to record a 2-track demo for them which came out in February 2007.

The situation was golden: this is a band that not only doesn't exist but has also never performed live in its life, an entire album had to absolutely be made! Two labels handled this, My Honey and Dischi dell'amico immaginario. We then arrive at September, here’s the album, but not a simple CD, tchà amateurs, this is a concept album about the various sentimental and emotional defeats of life (note: the indie-people are very sensitive and express their pain by hugging others in a frenzy of striped and checked sweaters). Because if you're a geek, it's very appropriate to emphasize it often and much, so it's better to stick to the classic equation glasses&nerd clothes = indie-loser = zero chicks. And thus, the circle closes on everything that is the imagery constructed to sell a product to a certain target. On Rockit, the triumphant news “My awesome mixtape is already at 1000 copies” also comes out, but the tone, compared to the presumed sales (would the CD that was delivered to me be part of the sales?), has something paradoxical about it.

Until now, I don't think I've seen anything new. Listening to the album, here too it seems to me that I don't perceive anything new. But there was so much chatter around this guy that, heck, it even made me want to talk about it a bit! And then Rockit worked so hard for this guy, at least as hard as they did to push the Canadians on us! It deserved a review….

…oh, you say that in all this fuss there’s only chatter and I don't talk about the CD?

Come on.