URANIUM USSR 1972

"Avarie"

SmallVoices - 2006

CD / limited BOX

Uranium USSR 1972 is a personal side-project of Angelo Bergamini, founder and leader of Kirlian Camera, that has existed for many years without releasing anything, except for a single track on the mother band's "Absentee" EP. "Avarie" is the first full-length of this interesting incarnation of one of Italy's underground electronic prime-movers, and comes in a luxurious digipack with intriguing graphics created by Elena Alice Fossi (co-leader and lead singer of Kirlian Camera), as well as in a limited edition mirrored Plexiglas box with many gadgets and inserts included.

The music of Uranium USSR 1972 is something completely different from Kirlian Camera's classic production, and could find analogies only with certain tracks on their most recent albums. Possibly, only the early MB managed to sound so cold and inhuman, but rather than concentration camps and nightmarish asylums, Bergamini's individual electronic massacres seem to evoke futuristic visions of a planet where human beings' presence can be barely felt, while the landscapes are completely dominated by steel, cement and glass, the air is thick with pollution, the weather is alternatively and unhealthily boiling or freezing, pouring down with acid rain and black snow.

Each of the five tracks is quite long, but also enough articulated and rich of sounds, noise manipulations and evolutions to keep the listener's interest alive during the whole CD. The milestone "Glaciation Room" and it's trance remix, where unsettling rhythms and an alien voice sample melts in a fantastic metropolitan holocaust atmosphere, the percussive industrial orgy of "Lumet Metro Cine*ma", the abrasive scarred ambient of "Rain Aesthetics" are all equally effective. "Avarie" is therefore recommended not just to every Kirlian Camera devote, but also to anyone into borderline electronics and challenging listening experiences. Well done, mr. Bergamini.

- Simon V.

Website: http://www.smallvoices.it

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/smallvoices