komakino: post-punk noise dreampop shoegaze indie & DIY fanzine

What an amazing band, Cranes.
They properly live and lived in that music pantheon which shaped what/who I am today.
This new release, featuring their John Peel sessions from 1989-1990 are like a splending red wine finally leaving the cellar after decades. 
Enjoy it.

It starts with a shoegazing pitch, then it goes fully and beautifully psychedelic right after the opening track. 
Like 'I know how the next song is going to be' and, no, you don't.
Mattia Marcelli, from Rome, Italy, is a sound engineer, and, before that, an ispired musician, multi-instrumentalist. 
We met here and there along the last two decades. My pleasure. 
This Music for Ghosts comes nine years after his debut work MatSch. But this is a new chapter.
Then, the bending, saturated guitars of the opening track Sinisterer are the perfect false intro to what you won't hear, jumping through the tracklist.
Ungewiss, track number two, is the real ticket to Mattia's trippy and articulated writing: an instrumental, smooth and suggestive ascension. It slowly mounts an enwrapping of multilayered sound cascade (check also Music for Waterfalls), and right after the storm it comes the celestial impasse of another instrumental piece, A Meadow. Disarming beauty, subtle haze.
Later Giurassico features an hypnotic bass riff and an overwhelming crescendo of jurassic volcano activity and bliss-out euphoria.
But it's Red Herring what I believe to be the hidden special treat of this best kept secret opus: catchy groove and mellowly sensual, and Mattia got some deepers nuances of vocals here. Fans of Spacemen 3 and Ultra Vivid Scene would love that. Like on Dissolve, fully mesmeric: there's a burning moment of crescendo here that totally hooked me. Let me know if you spot that too. Do yourself a favour and play this track with headphones on. This song grabs the whole record to another level.
Then it's Wastelands to venture through drone rock catharsis. What a pity it's not a ten minutes trance song. I played it on loop a couple of times. It works better.
Twin forests, simple instrumental interlude, still, so tuneful and strong of a cohesive arrangement. 
Last track 100 Guitars Army talks like an adult to his former song One Guitar Army. No rush, no, it's a calmed down cavalcade of texturally-rich guitar work, with a number of swells ecstatically epic.
A record label should pop-up and share with the world this hidden gem.



Also, don't miss these live, early versions of Wastelands and Ungweiss

What a great character, truly a force of nature. 
I remember when I heard for the very first time Bikini Kill's Pussy Whipped in my teenage years: BOOOOOOOOOM. 
My skills in English were worse than now, still, what I was able to catch here and there from Kathleen's lyrics was not less totally fueled by their abrasive punk sound and - be sure - by her one-of-a-kind voice.. me and my sister were blown away by this record, and when I discovered Bikini Kill was also fanzine.. you know. If I'm not wrong, it happened we rent in a record shop Babies in Toyland's Fontanelle and this BK's Pussy Whipped. That blast.
Years later, I spent a couple of days around Frumpies when they toured Italy, and it was crazy to have an icecream with them in Rome (Tobi Vail
paid for it! Still thanks!). 
Anyway. Only recently I discovered The Punk Singer, a brilliant and poignant documentary about Kathleen Hanna. And even less I knew about her battle with Lyme disease ("About six months into the filming, she was finally diagnosed" - cfr). 
Yeah, kryptonite against Superman, as the doctor - irony of fate - says about her condition.
Director Sini Anderson made a great work here indeed. It's not only about the Music. We all know it never was. And it is more of a tour film. But for someone from on the other side of the world in his teens, this overview on third wave feminism, the close-up view on Kathleen's acvitivism, her life in Music and her inner circle of friendships is a total time travelling of what I was missing. 
And, what the fuck, "only six weeks after friend Kathleen Hanna's diagnosis of late stage Lyme disease, [..] Anderson had been diagnosed as well with it" [wiki] - There's an interesting interview with her on TruthOut: "[..] by the time we finished the film, we knew 17 other artists with late-stage Lyme disease who all happened to be women". And this also drove her to her film So Sick, which I can't find to understand at what point it is. The dedicated crowd-funding page is lost, I see.

So.

Kathleen Hanna has changed the life of many, mine too. Then.. 

Trailer:
 
Watch it on DailyMotion or YT