The God Machine
Purity

Sleepless night or almost; one of many... I'm used to it, I'm used to living with it.

An unexpected family loss has contributed to making these last few days heavy, particularly the night I am trying to overcome, to conquer.

I thought, I tried to meet my music with my thoughts, which always helps me in these enormous moments of difficulty... I'm already struggling to write, I'm already struggling to move forward. But I don't want to, I must not surrender. Also because "La Bastarda" is knocking at the doors. I must keep my anxieties, my fears, my depression at bay, which wants to come alive once again, and hurt me.

And suddenly, the God Machine came to my aid, in assistance... and their very first and already significant discographic step of November 1991.

The purity in music translating the title of the Ep.

Robin, Jimmy, and Ronald were the God Machine.

Originally from San Diego in California, a sunny place where playing Alternative Rock wasn't fashionable at the end of the eighties. Together, they made the difficult decision to cross the Atlantic Ocean in search of a safe harbor and reached London; they were signed by the tiny "Eve Recordings" which immediately appreciated them, from the first contacts and the first auditions.

Home, The Blind Man, and Purity: three long tracks are their business card. Raw versions, completely amateur recordings but which already provide those elements of grandeur that will explode later in the debut album "Scenes from the Second Storey", a cornerstone of the nineties.

An extraordinary inspiration, considering the young age of the group. A pressing sequence of notes that push beyond the barriers of Hard-Rock and Post-Punk. Obsessive riffs, perfect geometric constructions, cascades of sounds of imperious power; then suddenly the release, the abandonment, the change of register: entering decadent, romantic territories of vivid melancholy.

I have never found any band comparable to them: unique, unrepeatable, masterful.

Dark and icy at the same time; black and white in the same song. A gothic cathedral of sounds, of images, of sensations while listening.

The first track "Home" is a child of Jane's Addiction: from Robin's chanting voice to the violent sound wall put in place. Everything refers to Perry Farrell's band; shadowy guitar lines with an acid psychedelic stride. Drums in dramatic elevation, a bass always in evidence capable of scorching the minutes, the passing seconds. Five and a half minutes that fly, that annihilate you, that make you "slave". They won immediately, they conquered me right away. And I will never stop drinking from their sacred and vital source.

"The Blind Man" opens with a distant acoustic phrasing. A solitary, elusive, poignant guitar... Robin's suffocated, hinted voice enters, and the track takes off. Minutes that rise, that float in the air... The register changes, veers... the guitars explode. Enough with the acoustic notes, we need noise, solidity, pounding on the sides. And that's what happens as the seconds pass... the music becomes a storm, blind fury, conflagration. Total orgy, guitar breaks, furious reprises... Absolute devastation.

Of the nine minutes of "Purity," I don't want to add anything: as I already highlighted at the beginning, it is enough for me to mention the word purity. I hope that good tia from Lecco, like me a great connoisseur of the God Machine, can say his own, can himself spend a few words on the song. To make the page better.

The sudden death of Jimmy Fernandez, just as the recordings for the second album were completed, ended the band's career in 1994. There was no sense in continuing without the brotherly friend... Boy by the Roadside....

And I dedicate it to my father-in-law Giovanni, "Ul macelar da Preglia" as he was known here by me.

Ad Maiora.