Gianluca Becuzzi — Haunted
The production is extremely clean and the sounds, despite the use of potentially "nasty"-sounding elements, are absolutely not aggressive. Becuzzi is not trying to smash our heads with his metal sheets, instead he seems to prefer to scare the shit out of us and make us feel uncomfortable.
The droning synths and deep low frequencies remind me of classic works by the likes of Lustmord and Coil, while the excellent and pure metal sounds call to mind primal industrial like Vivenza and even the uneasy metal chain hurling and dragging of Masayoshi Urabe.
In fact I’m curious about how and where these beautiful metal bashing and grinding sounds were recorded. I guess you all suspect that usually I’m not a big fan of pristine clean sounds, but Becuzzi's composition is so good that all the tracks of this "Haunted" CDr are an absolute pleasure to behold.
All their elements are skillfully placed in the right spot and therefore all the pieces have a very distinct structure and feel very coherent to each other. Gianluca Becuzzi has been involved in experimental music since the 80s so this comes as no surprise. I'm genuinely amazed by the quality of this work, since it's been a while since I enjoyed this kind of material so much. On the other hand, everybody knows that Italians do it better!
The spray-painted + stickers format of the CDr may put off some people, and I don't recommend to shove it into your Mac computers, but the option to get this on tape should satisfy all palates.
In conclusion: "Haunted" is a beautiful album with a very fitting name. Listen to this in quiet moments, possibly in the dark and with eyes closed and forget everything else. If I absolutely had to point out a flaw, I would say that at thirty minutes of length this album is too short. I want more next time! For fans of old school industrial, dark ambient and good atmospheric music in general.