Symphony for A Genocide / MAURIZIO BIANCHI
This album by Italian authority Maurizio Bianchi (M.B.) is arguably one of his masterpieces.
Released by Sterile Records, founded by Nigel Ayers of Nocturnal Emissions, this was M.B.’s first album, having previously only released cassette tapes.
Not only is the album title impactful, but the track titles are also named after Nazi concentration camps, with M.B.’s muffled electronic music seeming to depict the scenes of the camps.
He later released an album through COM ORGANISATION, run by White House’s William Bennett, and also contributed a track to Ramleh’s BROKEN FLAG’s classic compilation “Neuengamme."
He was deeply involved in the noise scene of the time, and I believe he was popular among those active in the scene as well.
I remember that AMK’s BANNED PRODUCTION also reissued a large number of his early albums on cassette tape.
M.B.’s albums, including this one, were extremely difficult to obtain, and even when they were available, they were expensive, costing tens of thousands of yen.
In the 1990s, they were often reissued.
However, the reissues were issued in small quantities and sold out quickly, so if you saw one, you had to buy it immediately.
I think M.B.’s works are still the same today, but now that you can listen to them on Spotify and YouTube, you can listen to them whenever you want, so there’s no need to buy anything unless it’s something you really like or something rare.
I myself really wanted “Neuengamme" at the time, but it was nowhere to be found, so I somehow managed to purchase it online from ZEST in Shibuya.
I bought the cassette tape, but I remember being disappointed because it looked like a bootleg version that had been dubbed onto a regular tape with a photocopied jacket.
However, the music playing from the boombox was all fresh and exciting to listen to.
It seems that after creating a large amount of music in the 1980s, M.B. took a break from music for a while.
Having gone through such a period, he continues to actively release works to this day, but I feel that the analog, violent sounds of his early days are what symbolize M.B. as a noise artist.
His early works, including this one, are still some of my favorite albums.