MMDM is the abbreviation for an Italian Doom-Jazz-band whose latest release can keep up its end against all of the big ones of the genre.
Electronica can be, sorry, but a pain in the ass. Repetitive as hell, stubborn in its atonal sound landscape, squeaky and high-pitched to the max. All of this applies to the worst kind of electronica, the stuff you will find in the mainstream charts, the EDM of the Tens and now Twenties. But there is also the other side of electronic music, the one where you can feel that there are real musicians behind it, who used their knobs and buttons like a normal instrument and who are able to transport something via their arrangements.
For quite some time now, Italian electronic artist Adriano Vincenti has been publishing music under the moniker Macelleria Mobile bi Mezzanotte. The name of the project means something like ‘Mobile Butcher’s shop at Midnight’ - keep that in mind, we will come back to it in a moment. Since 2013, with the release of their album “Black Lake Confidence”, the band has introduced a more drone orientated kind of Doom-Jazz – also due to the final addition of Saxophone player Pierluigi Ferro; while Vincenti before published some kind of harsh noise electronica, the band is now compared to acts like Zu, Dale Cooper Quartet or Bohren und der Club of Gore – and interestingly, these comparisons are not far-fetched or too high for the quartet from Rome.
The band has a particular soft spot for everything related to Film Noir and Hard Boiled detective literature, which is obvious when you look at the covers – this one features a cut-up picture of a classic pin-up girl with the whole colors being changed into different shades of red; actually this might be one of the nicest covers I have seen in the last few months. Song titles like “Devotion”, “Death was last to enter the Nightclub” or “Neon Lights Say you will Die Tonight” are quite explicit in their meaning.
To give you an idea of the band’s sound (made up of synths, drones, saxophone and drum computers) you should listen to the title track “Noir Jazz Femdom” - a classical triphop beat is accompanied by harsh synths and drone sounds and the saxophone gives it some kind of erotic undertone which completely fits the lyrics about sex and violence. Imagine a spawn between Zu and Portishead but not with a soothing Beth Gibbons but rather with a disturbing, hushed version of Mike Patton. It sounds like a poppy description to a crime scene where the detectives find a slaughtered body that obviously had sex just before the massacre kicked in.
This album is one of the late highlights in great (dark) electronica and something every lover of dark jazz should embrace. Welcome to the butcher’s shop!
