MARSICO, MAURIZIO - The Sunny Side Of The Dark Side

After the dark clouds of the 70s the world was changing and Maurizio Marsico, fresh off New York sessions with Rhys Chatham, started the 80s with a couple of experimental records under the moniker Monofonic Orchestra, published by the cult label Italian Records, Music Design (1981) and Friends Portraits (1981). Stefano Tamburini, the creator of the legendary Ranxerox comic hero painted by Tanino Liberatore, was an onlooker in disguise in New York Marsicos exhibitions, and back in Italy he crowned him this way on the pages of his Frigidaire magazine: The best things Ive heard in New York came from Monofonic Orchestra (the Italian Maurizio Marsico with guest stars): fuck compliments! Far from Glenn Branca and his bunch of avant-oratorical assholes guitarists. . . . Maurizio sings some songs with the lyrics by Stefano, in a serial killer love songs mood, theyre called Tongue In Cheek Giulia, My Head Is A Broken Heart and Crish Crash, unreleased to this day, they seemed lost but now you can listen to them in all their lo-fi glory for the first time on this CD. In a track list that, through another unreleased triptych, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable goes new-wave of Luce Bianca Rumore Bianco, the smooth Lunatica You and the urban Overground (these two respectively with guest-star such Gianluigi Trovesi at bass clarinet and Mauro Spina at drums), captures the most mutant and comics-like Marsico. The Sunny Side Of The Dark Side is the snap-shot of a momentary Luna Park, it shows the funny part of a story lived on the wild side of the street, with the excesses and the drugs that will lead to deaths or lives to rebuild, and documents the transition of the rising star of Italian experimental music of early Eighties - with studies in jazz, electronics and ethnomusicology at Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan - towards borderline pop territories. Theyre the Eighties in all their post-modern boom, with the video-art, graffiti, rap explosions. . . . All cult stuff that at the times didnt find the commercial success but created an underground monster, and today brings us back the most playful and creative side of an artist that is now more actual and fresh than ever. - Christian Zingales.