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Band Of The Day #11 - BANJO OR FREAKOUT "Mr. No"

Moments of inspiration pass more frequent with boredom. Lonely souls contrive to conjure a lot of the best things out of thin air ringing with the sound of silence. In your ears. Sat waiting for his work-bound girlfriend in her Hackney flat, Alessio Natalizia decided that he may as well take some of that dead time and turn it into the most fragile, haunting but brilliantly busy music we’ve heard all year. Pop makes girlfriends proud, we reckon.

Born in Turin, Natalizia has lived in London for the last three years, shops at Sounds of the Universe and continues to release in streams that hark back to some of the most affecting sounds of the year. Shocking Pinks’s desolate monotone, the hushed menace of Deerhunter’s Cryptograms and No Age’s lo-fi psychedelic noise scream softly as they get channelled through the stark surface and constant grind of Arthur Russell. His timid voice rises in brave arcs like a Panda Bear cub.

That idea of not letting those moments pass by to become lost opportunities extends into his recording technique - working around the one premise that each track is recorded after its first take, it's up to Natalizia to tweak and prang things into shape thereafter. He plays his third gig at the Amersham Arms in New Cross on the 7th of January.

With this track, ‘Mr No’, seizured beats chime and chatter, eating into each other as they find a mutual rhythm, as beats carve abrupt tangent changes. There’s a delirium-induced vocal, haunted like a voice lost to the city, as muted brass, piano hooks and splintering chords rustle under a wall of distortion.

Loose-fingered fumbles, a mess seems to come together. The sound of a man marching to his own mild-mannered madness, skipping to his own disjointed beat.

Download: Banjo or Freakout – ‘Mr. No’

Feature – DiScover: Banjo or Freakout

Banjo or Freakout @ MySpace

- Samuel Strang and Kev Kharas

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