Music for Phantoms — Self Titled

Music for Phantoms is the new project from My cat is an Alien brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, which mixers together melodic and haunted acoustic guitar elements with primitive wooden instruments / percussive tones and the odd feedback glide- all to make a strange, edgy and  beautiful one long track cd with an accompanying film on DVD-R disk.

Though out the track there’s a great yin/jang feeling with the improvised yet harmonic gentle flow of the acoustic guitar picks, plucks and strums rumbing against the weird shifting wooden instrumental/percussive tones and haunted feedback tones. The pair giving the piece a rather nice 3d feel so it feels like it’s coming from various places around you. The piece is meant to bring to mind a pagan ceremony to welcome winter in a forest and that it certainly does, aptly dancing between the unknown strange states of mind and achingly sad / beautiful- the pair making the 37 minute track bizarre, haunted and compelling through out. The releases comes with a DVD which rather under-whelming me, it consists of near static footage of a woodland trees with fog over them and the 37 minute track played over the top- really nothing  really visually happens over the tracks running time the fog shifts a little, but there's not enough to be interesting or rewarding. Sure you  wouldn’t want MTV type rapid cut visual for this- but this is too slow and ineffectual for it’s own good.

Another interesting and rewarding sonic step into new territory from the Opalio brothers. With a superb and atmospheric 37 minute track, it’s just a pity the visuals couldn’t match up to  the haunting and compelling Sonics.