Elia Casu and Antonio Pinna - Matadiau (Self Release) [Experimental]

Italian musician/producer Elia Casu is a nomadic Italian, long time Istanbul resident, with a serious history of band membership and studio work, who currently works as a sound designer - you'll hear why in a minute. Details about Antonio Pinna are thin on the ground, but he's an Italian percussionist, and, well, that's about all I know or can find out. He's good though.

They certainly work well as team, and their new album is as curious a release as you'll hear this year. It's a far out, freaky but friendly, constantly surprising, genre fluid fusion of acoustic guitar, all sorts of rhythmic work and subtle percussive detail, wrapped up with machine sounds and oddball sonic moments that pepper the compositions at unexpected, constantly surprising moments.

The album kicks off with the welcoming, abstract-Americana sounds of "Rhythmic Topgrophies", the guitar set to Southern-folk whilst Pinna warms up with a sparse, plodding, un-folk structure. Next up are the pleasantly glitching machine sounds, Asiatic tones and cinematic ambient pads of, "Diagrams for Two Sound Bodies"; that maintains the easy vibe but hints at stranger things to come, and lo and behold, "Geometries of the Beat" quickly launches the album into odder territory with an unrelenting up-tempo synth refrain, encouraged by skittering drum hits that would work well in deck 3 of a dextrous techno DJ's set.

The album then careers between the spiralling electroacoustic experimention of, "Wood, Metal, Air", the sedate, gently microdosed "Manual Interference", the sub-aquatic starting, ultimately cosmic drumtastic, "Temporal Fractures", the childlike vocals and playful, wilfully off-kilter music of "Chistu Lioni", and culminating in the slightly eery, late night cinema soundtracking, "String Friction".

If you're in the mood to hear something a bit different or play guess the genre then you know what to do.

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Playlist Companion

Find the lads in the Slow Oddities Playlist.