GNOD / MAI, MAI, MAI

GNOD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ethyzQtrSEs&t=681s

Since their inception, Gnod’s musical trajectory has been one of constant fluctuation borne out of an incessant need to discover new sonic worlds. Beginning life as a shamanic drone ensemble, at times fitting up to 15 members on stage, these early rituals informed the core ideals that have come to define the group in their years of activity; community and trance-inducing repetition. Throughout a discography that has amassed dozens of CD-R’s, cassettes and vinyls for labels like Rocket Recordings, Trensmat, Krokodilo (Blackest Ever Black) and their own Tesla Tapes imprint, a restless yet organic need mutate their music into new realms has had critics clawing for comparative touch stones. Acts as far ranging as Hawkwind, Popul Vuh, Pan Sonic, Sunburned Hand of the Man and Pharaoh Sanders have all been referenced in attempt to pinpoint their output, one that has historically never aped any genre but with each record furthered their own unique place in truly independent music. It is the exact same dedication to the live arena that has seen Gnod become one of the most celebrated live bands in the UK and secured them multiple tours and festival appearances throughout Europe. In these times of cash in hand ‘glory days’ reunions and bands simply rehashing their recorded material pitch perfect live, Gnod are a stark and welcome anomaly. Already moving on from the barley released and universally acclaimed epic ‘Infinity Machines’, the current live incarnation of the band is characterised by a crushing, cataclysmic new protest music whose call to arms gravitas offers a meaningful defiance to Cameron’s Austerity Britain. Gnod have taken their very namesake and charged it with bludgeoning new edge that is as euphoric as it is nihilistic. It is one that stridently attests to the group’s spiritual center, one of community that is inclusive and respectful of its audience yet will never placate to their expectations. Instead, Gnod offer a gateway to an aural black hole and along with firm guiding hand, the opportunity to dive head and body first into a powerfully new psychedelic maelstrom full of possibilities.

Mai Mai Mai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1P8YHXsyIk&t=1s

is an Audio/Video project, an idiosyncratic examination into Mediterranean and Southern Italian folklore, a dark journey into past traditions, made of blurred memories and hazy sounds. It can be considered as a ‘Mediterranean Hauntology’, one that avoids the pitfalls of nostalgia yet which reanimates the ghosts of a lost past, in the form of an evocative ritual.
Mai Mai Mai has releases out on Boring Machines, Yerevan Tapes, Not Not Fun, God Unknown, Instruments of Discipline, La Tempesta International.
He’s part of GNOD‘s “Chapel Perilous” LP out on Rocket Recordings, playing electronics in this album, and he released several collaborations such as with Lino Capra Vaccina, Luciano Lamanna, Go Dugong, Maria Violenza, made music for Gucci and scores for documentaries and short movies.
The first three LPs released as Mai Mai Mai have so far been named after characters drawn from the Greek alphabet, beginning with Theta (Boring Machines, 2013) and followed by Δέλτα (Delta) (Yerevan Tapes, 2014) and Φ (Phi) (Not Not Fun Records / Boring Machines, 2017) With each of these projects – subsequently anthologized as the ‘Mediterranean trilogy’ – Roman noise maven Cutrone has unloaded a venomous, punishing and miasmic electronic music, one that reached a climax of vivid, interzonal synthesis and scorched ritual on the trilogy’s final instalment Φ.
After those releases Mai Mai Mai continues to explore Mediterranean history yet does so with a different sense of ambition, with “Nel Sud” LP out on La Tempesta International (also home to Xiu Xiu, Ninos Du Brasil, Populous). A journey into the past of the Italian south, realized through original footage taken from Italian ethno-documentaries made during the 1960s and 70s, Nel Sud is intended as an original soundtrack and is mixed with sounds from the original films. With the new single “Il Secondo Coro delle Lavandaie” (The original was made by Roberto De Simone with Compagnia di Nuovo Canto Popolare and released in 1976, an iconic moment in southern Italian and neapolitan music) Mai Mai Mai looks again to the ‘South’, but this time encompasses an ethnic and folkloric tradition in a more contemporary way, conjuring a work in which art, music & theatre intersect