Over merely two years of activity, independent Italian label Maple Death Records have set up a solid body of work focused on pushing back the boundaries between genres and listening purpose, extending their scope from leftfield-leaning electronics to weatherbeaten ambient scapes onto post-rock and kraut influences, released in both tape and vinyl formats.
After starting off on the label with his self-titled debut in 2015, Nico Pasquini aka Stromboli finally reemerges with his first full-length ‘Volume Uno‘. Giving full vent to a tape-saturated canvas of anxiogenic ambiences, shadow-clad synth psychedelia and grainy-textured layers, the Bologna-based artist takes you on for a borderline, hallucinogenic trip across semi-abstract cityscapes and barren post industrial terrains as seen through an insecure, paranoid-like perspective.
It’s no wonder that Nico explains the album has been recorded “mainly at night during chronic fits of insomnia and fueled by an unhealthy addiction to Prince’s Purple Rain flick and Michael Mann’s neo-noir masterpiece Thief“. Our pick – the album’s opener ‘Drag Phase‘, shows the most stripped-back facet of a black-hearted monolithic whole slowly disintegrating in thick carbonic fumes and pitch-dark sooty peels. Winter depression is almost gone. Almost.
Volume Uno is released via Maple Death Records on 10th February, pre-order a copy from Bandcamp.
TRACKLIST
A1. Drag Phase
A2.Downwards
A3. Haunted
B1. WhiteWalls
B2. Arrows
B3. Glow
B4. Basedow Graves
Discover more about Stromboli and Maple Death Records on Inverted Audio.