Starfuckers
Sinistri

Third record release by this Tuscan trio that, along with the sublime Massimo Volume, represented the most experimental front of Italian rock in the last decade: "Sinistri" came to light in 1994, almost at the same time as "Lungo i bordi", of which it represents the other side of the coin: while Massimo Volume built cohesive, vibrant, dramatic architectures full of tension, pathos, and restlessness, supported by unshakable harmonic solidity, the Starfuckers (Manuele Giannini, Roberto Bertacchini, Alessandro Bocci) ruthlessly disintegrated every form established over 30 years of rock, presenting its shapeless scraps anew.
Lydia Lunch (someone who knows a thing or two about avant-rock) defined the Starfuckers' proposal as "eternal soundcheck": I feel I can endorse her, without reservations.
Sharp, shrill, atonal guitar chords; sporadic electronic splashes, perhaps reminiscent of a certain Allen Ravenstine; words in free association, enunciated with clarity and delivered without emphasis; all of this fragmented by misleading samples, random insertions, and a daring use of the cut-up technique ("Tagli/ netti", so the initial lyrics of the song go): this is the disarming introduction to "Derivazione-Attesa". At a certain point, a sequence of slint-like chords, a straight line of synth, a timid rhythm emerge to create an enigma destined to remain as such until the end. More than anguish, resignation prevails, the anticipation of an inevitable death.
The ghost of the Slint returns in the sophisticated progression of "Mutilati", amid synthesized whistles, very gray chords, electronic bulges, jazzy drums, an undulating bass, and a mumbling tuba.

In "Infinito", perhaps the best track on the album, a didgeridoo makes its appearance in the floating sound fogs, an exotic oceanic instrument. Among synthetic drones sent into eternal loops, the cosmic impressionism of Tangerine Dream stripped of all its enchantment and corrupted by radio signals from the debris of a lost galaxy, with guitars crumbling among detunings and ripples, incomprehensible scribbles, sampled voices who knows where, synth bubbles, feedback that seems like dissolving stars, words evoking desolation ("apparecchi rotti/ e mezzi rotti/ edifici vuoti/ polvere/ ombre/"), flows the contemplation of a universe in terminal state, perhaps already imploded onto itself and reduced to a pure vegetative state, contaminated by sonic waste of every kind.

One could almost speak of "action playing", paraphrasing the painting style invented by Jackson Pollock. Music that borders on silence, that has no destination, no why: a slap to the concept of music as an "organized set of sounds." And the silence, coasted in "Infinito", is embraced by "Zentropia" and "Macrofonie", at most grazed by dull, empty drum hits or sudden sound clippings. A surprisingly rich and varied music harmonically, perhaps because it is precisely from silence that the chromatic variety of sounds emerges more discernibly.

Behind such a desecrating attitude, there hides a profound knowledge of 20th-century avant-garde: in the 25 seconds of pure dissociation composing "In Primo Luogo", the Starfuckers bow to John Cage, the inventor of aleatory music.
The only jolt of the album comes with "Ordine Pubblico", an intoxicating, hypnotic, perverse math-rock, punctuated by obsessive handclapping, with a socially themed text with ambiguous ideological nuances. With this track, the Starfuckers announce their future in the 2000s (renamed as "Sinistri"), marked by a peculiar research on rhythmic scansions. But before that, the Starfuckers will continue their icy autopsy of rock, with the subsequent and celebrated "Infrantumi".