Redrum Alone
My First Kernel Panic

We have two thoroughbreds and we place a good sum of money on them. This is because Tommaso "Qzerty" Danisi and Piero "Peet" Pappalettere, the all-round souls of the duo "Redrum Alone", have the two most interesting qualities that can be found in a "band" (no offense) of our days: musical depth and vast room for improvement. Their story is a Southern tale curiously dotted with vocoder and electribe synthesizers, a musical journey steeped in passionate and competent electronics that nowadays seems to find rare interpreters in the Italian scene: in a traditionally barren and now unexpectedly musical setting in Bari, it was in 2006 that Tommaso and Piero started honing their first compositional ideas, drawing strength from excellent musical knowledge spanning vintage Electro-pop, 90’s Trance, and Intelligent Dance Music. Their first piece is the EP "Patchcord" from 2007, a modest and unpretentious introductory letter containing three decent tracks with techno-IDM nuances and two mixes: a tentative start but capable of giving a thorough idea of the substantial electronic consistency of the duo from Puglia, all focused on exploring the potentials of the most modern and tribal synthetic war machine. An intriguing and respectable calling card in the sparse Italian scene full of amateur rockers and politicized collectives hardly able to formulate noteworthy musical proposals.

We place this sum in light of the latest small effort from Qzerty and Peet, the witty EP "My First Kernel Panic" released in October 2010, continuation and development of the musical ideas already present in "Patchcord" three years earlier, consistently dense with new electronic sensations and funk influences, although, it must be said, too scant even in its extended play ambitions. Let's be honest: Fractured Reality, which opens the record, is a small time bomb, brilliantly adept at perfectly diving into the 70’s electro-pop of Kraftwerk and the contemporary funk of groups like LCD Soundsystem and !!!, absolutely deserving more than a casual listen for the ease with which it spins out a catchy tune worthy of the best alternative clubs. OniricAct Part3 and OniricAct Part2 are very different parts of the same whole: languid and suspended in a robotic progression the first, vaguely animated by Electronic Body Music hints the second, where Qzerty's singing seems to seek inspiration from the raw vocals of Front 242. This verbose aspect is the least convincing, making User Interface an interesting trial in intentions, lengthy in execution (even though the initial count, perhaps lacking a bit of punch, seems to well recall the most lively Chemical Brothers): more attention to the bassline wouldn't have hurt. Closing it all is an intriguing mix of OniricAct Part3, that seems able to compete with Fatboy Slim and Soulwax.

This sum, as mentioned, should be placed without hesitation, because the times allow it: we are just at the beginning of a path that permits grand thinking. The expectations, not unachievable, are two: a lesser didactic verbosity and a necessary work on the length that adds up to an hour of straight music, better still if garnished with a greater dose of conviction.

On the Bari wheel, a pair is played without hesitation: an encouragement incentive for Redrum Alone, with the hope of seeing them in the near future as protagonists of an electronic scene, the Italian one, that desperately needs new interpreters capable of not giving in to the easy song sirens.

Contact:
www.myspace.com/redrumalone
www.soundcloud.com/redrumalone
www.twitter.com/redrumalone
www.facebook.com/redrumalone