OUT OF THE BOX #23
Sparkle in Grey (2018)
Out of the Box is a monthly series focusing on seven inch records. It’s an excuse to engage with my collection in a new way, as well as to write about older records and genres we don’t often cover at ACL.
OUT OF THE BOX #23
Sparkle In Grey ~ Mevlanian Ears (2018)
For this month’s record, I’ve pulled Mevlanian Ears, the first single from Milano’s Sparkle in Grey (and also Sparkle in Grey’s Milano). A decade into their career, the Italian "paladins of non-genre"are at their most accessible, joined by Egyptian singer Reem Soliman on side A, and the legendary Italian experimental band Le Forbici di Manitù on side B.
Sparkle in Grey are a four piece group making melodic but noisy music that utilizes electronics, found-sound, and field recordings together with more traditional instruments (violin, bass, and guitar). Originally a side project of Matteo Uggeri [Hue, Der Einzige], Sparkle in Grey’s four-piece debut LP A Quiet Place (2008) impressed me at the time. They are post-rock adjacent in their “bandness,” but with enough experimentation to defy simple categorization, and even at their strangest still maintaining some connection to pop. [They would later deconstruct their debut in 2018’s The Bones of Quietness.] Shortly after the release of their debut record, I interviewed Uggeri and Alberto Carozzi, with additional input from Cristiano Lupo and Franz Krostopovic.
Since that first interview, I’ve met Matteo and Alberto several times, and indeed Teo has become a good friend. We went to Tagofest [RIP] together in 2011, which I’ve mentioned in passing as a formative experience. I featured Uggeri again in 2012 for the second installment of my column Sound Propositions. He also contributed a guest end of year list at the culmination of the first year of ACL. In 2013, I reviewed Sparkle in Grey’s Thursday Evening and Nuno Moita and Matteo Uggeri’s Batalha alongside other releases on Old Bicycle Records. Richard and I are both big fans of the Between the Elements quadrilogy which Uggeri produced; you can read Rich’s thoughts on the final volume, Pagetos, here, as well as this review of Uggeri’s collaboration with our friend Enrico Coniglio.
Back in 2018, Teo profiled me on his blog Concrete Shelves, which he describes as “a peek at the places where CDs, LPs and cassettes have rest all over the world.” [Wouldn’t this make a great—and extremely niche—coffee table book?] I picked up this seven inch directly from Teo in Milano in May 2019, alongside Milano, Sparkle in Grey’s full length from which the “Mevlano” single is drawn. Their previous record, ﺭﺍﺩﻳﻮ ﺇﺯﺩﺍﻍ [Brahim Izdag] (2016), marked the end of a period of work for SiG, allowing Milano to serve as something of a departure.
That said there are clear continuities, such as the increased use of world influences, and strange interpretations of traditional and pop songs, something also featured in Uggeri’s underrated The Telephone. Their friends and family left messages on an answering machine, singing amateur versions of songs they love. Somehow I file this in the same category as that Dirty Projectors’ reinterpretation of Black Flag songs on Rise Above (2007), at least in its free relation to the source material. On Brahim Izdag, these experiments with songcraft include “Gray Riot,” a version of The Clash’s "White Riot" with lyrics translated into Chinese by Yan Jun, and an almost straight take on the traditional Ukrainian song "Minka Minka.” The three instrumentalists in Sparkle in Grey do a lot of the heavy lifting in carrying the “songness” of these tunes, while Uggeri’s role as producer is a bit more ambiguous. I think of Fields of Corn (2012), in which Uggeri recorded the singer-songwriter Bob Corn with binaural microphones as he walked around a field singing and playing guitar. That record includes a cover of a Bonnie 'Prince' Billy song, and even though Uggeri’s contribution is restricted to recording the performance wearing binaural microphones, his artistic signature is there.
For Milano, Alberto swapped guitar for bass, since Cris played tenor sax, while Franz added piano to his usual violin and viola. By this point, Matteo is contributing more recognizable beats and samples, something he continues to develop with his solo project Barnacles, but together with instrumentalists and a singer, his work as producer helps ground the more pop sensibilities of this album. “Mevlano” appears third on the record, the traditional sequence for a single, which features a guest vocalist. The quartet is joined by singer Reem Soliman, and at 5:32 you can rest assured that the group have no pretensions of striking a radio hit.
“Mevlano” begins with Soliman reciting a poem in Arabic, before Matteo begins to bring in a beat, eventually joined by Soliman’s enchanting vocals dancing with Cris’ sax. The piano enters with a plaintive counterpoint, alternating with responses from Franz’ string instruments. The bass line is not overly complex but it is driving and, along with the percussion samples and Arabic vocals, is an important element in grounding the mood of the song. The structure begins to self-destruct around the 4th minute, a liquifying drone that grants a bit more space for Soliman to shine as the song ends.
The B-side “Vulcanian Ears” is a collaboration with the group Le Forbici di Manitù (Manitù’s Scissors) and isn’t included on Milano, all whose songs explore the band’s hometown through the overlooked lens of water. This tune is thus free to pursue freer lyrical content, which comes from Forbici’s Vittore Baroni, a legendary figure in the Italian underground whose work Matteo introduced me to back in 2011.
Baroni (b. 1956) became a prolific steward of the “Eternal Network” soon after being introduced to mail art in 1977, and has remained perhaps the most active mail artist in Italy for over four decades. In 1979 Baroni began his long-running publication Arte Postale!, an international and collaborative mail art zine project which was available only to participants, culminating with its 100th and final edition in 2009, after years of reduced output.1 [His works for Bau have continued some of the ideas from the zine.]
In addition to his work as a mail artist and editor, Baroni writes critical cultural commentary on a variety of subjects, including comic books and music. He remains a regular contributor to Blow Up, an Italian music magazine roughly equivalent to UK’s The Wire, each of which offer criticism of a variety of genres, generally focusing on artists who are outside of the mainstream. Though he insists he is not a musician, Baroni does produce music, most notably as part of the group Le Forbici di Manitù. And from 1980-1984 (the peak years of Arte Postale!) he made sound collages under the name Lieutenant Murnau, a “ghost musical group” whose moniker was freely available for others to use and which collaborated with Maurizio Bianchi and others in the noise/industrial tape scene of the early 80s. There’s an important overlap between the mail art network and the “cassette culture” of the 1970s and 80s; contributors to Arte Postale! included Genesis P-Orridge, Monte Cazzazza, GX Jupitter- Larsen (The Haters), and Merzbow.
Le Forbici di Manitù are a group that are difficult to gloss, but I would point to their bizarre 2019 tribute to the legend Mina, Zona Minata. Each track features the group joining forces with friends from the old industrial/noise scene, as Manitù Rossi sings mostly straight versions of Mina’s classics over very different instrumentals. “Vulcanian Ears” has none of the abrasiveness of those artists, of course; the bass, sax and piano are given plenty of room to stretch out. Baroni contributes lyrics to the song, with speech by Deborah Arnold and additional vocals by Manitù Rossi, just off enough to be surreal in its affect.
So two fine tunes from a group I’m quite fond of, and hopefully many of you will dig deeper into their catalog.
A partial list of notable contributors to Arte Postale! includes: Shozo Shimamoto, Maurizio Catelan, Maurizio Bianchi, John Held, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Ruggero Maggi, Michael Scott, HR Fricker, Peter Klustermann, Charles Burns, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Genesis P-Orridge, Ray Johnson, Carlo Pittore, Ulises Carrion, Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, Piermario Ciani, Guy Bleus, Ruud Janssen, Crackerjack Kid, Anna Banada, Mark Pawson, and Minoy.