Mamuthones - Fear On The Corner [CD]

Sardinians Mamuthones initially emerged from the Italian occult psychedelic movement alongside the likes of Father Murphy, Mai Mai Mai and their labelmates Lay Llamas. Yet now, with their Rocket Recordings debut album ‘Fear On The Corner’, the band find themselves undergoing a metamorphosis from mystical and ceremonial realms into a direct connection with the everyday, the personal and the political. This vibrant reinvention also sees Mamuthones transcending their roots in Italian prog and soundtrack work and shifting their modus operandi firmly in the direction of a distinctly New York-based headspace - a realm of mirrorballs and black-clad basements. As the band’s Alessio Gastaldello tells it, this is a groove-based. eclectic style that finds its metier in the realm of two albums which are paid direct homage in the record’s very title - the bleak and kinetic ‘Fear Of Music’ by Talking Heads and the iconoclastic, heat-haze repetition of Miles Davis’ ‘On The Corner’. “The songs deal with fear.” he clarifies. “Fear of the present, of human situations, fear of the new political situation, but also fear of relationship breakdown, fear of fear itself” Yet this is principally an aural landscape - “it is a big dance party for very sad events” clarifies Alessio, on the disparity between the serious nature of this record’s subject matter and its distinctly hedonistic atmosphere. “We are a kind of Titanic orchestra playing and dancing while the ship goes down. The party must go on”