New Italian Futurism?
A recent London show attempts to extend the Futurist concept into the 21st Century

Italian futurism is a subject that refuses to die. Although politically compromised by its links to Italian nationalism and fascism, it remains a recurrent source of fascination for the musical intelligentsia. Its aestheticized visions of mechanical music and its revolutionary creative spirit are still constantly cited in explanations of our technologized sense of aesthetics in music and beyond. What's more unusual is for artists (or, more relevantly, promoters and curators) to explicitly attempt to update, rather than reference, futurist concepts. The "New Italian Futurists" event was co-promoted by the Italian Cultural Institute and Extrasensory, organizers of regular nights dedicated primarily to clicks n' cuts/microwave and glitch electronica. Intriguing as these styles can be, they can also be anaemic, polite and fashionable modes of subtle rather than violent disruption; conceptual, rather than visceral.

Besides their embrace of mechanical and industrial-environmental sounds, the original Futurists also praised "electricity, speed, violence and war", and their aesthetic always had an edge of danger. In its original sense, Futurism doesn't just imply a love of the new or a technological aesthetic but also an embrace of danger and provocation. In short, if you invoke Futurism, you have to be prepared for the unexpected and perhaps the unacceptable. The event featured "... the new wave of Italian sound artists who are extending the revolutionary ideas of Luigi Russolo and the futurist movement in ways relevant to the 21st century." The artists shared a focus on "noise, rhythm, the microtonal and improvisation". Due to the "serious" mode of presentation and the pleasant context of a deconsecrated church (the 291 Gallery) the crowd was more "bourgeois" than the futurist rhetoric might suggest, its orientation far more towards electronica than industrial.

The Futurist theme was novel enough to attract curiosity, but on paper an anaemic, politically correct version of futurism seemed the most likely outcome of the event. The opening act, Alessandro "Mugen" Canova, initially seemed to confirm these expectations. Starting deceptively with quiet, generic electronica/glitch details, it wasn't clear what Canova planned for a full crowd showing signs of congratulating itself on its avant-garde tastes. Gradually, violent bursts of dissonance began to shatter the complacency, and Canova soon began to deploy painfully high frequencies causing both walk-outs and involuntary ear covering.

Unexpectedly, the real "revolutionary spirit of futurism" began to emerge. His noise disturbed, provoked and outraged ever-larger sections of the audience and, eventually, the organizers, just as the original Futurists outraged the Italian bourgeoisie. Canova made no concessions to either, constantly intensifying the ferocity of his sound into something Spartan and punitive, a trial in the best sense of the word. For those who could bear it (after an hour less than a quarter of the crowd remained), the performance was stunning; each brief lull was followed only by further and more aggressive intensification. The blast of sound could be felt as much as heard and seemed to suspend time in a merciless fashion—by the end, it felt (positively) as if far longer than an hour had passed.

Canova had started late and his ferocity only seemed to be increased by the organizers fruitlessly asking him (three times) to stop, each request only spurring him on (his recordings are not as brutal). Although he uses similar techniques and his sound sometimes echoes the dense digital scree of laptop artists such as Pita, Canova's vision seems more heroic and, live at least, more brutal. His use of harsh texture was as perceptible as the volume and at its peaks his performance was far closer to power electronics or industrial noise than electronica, producing an heroically distressed mechanical noise, "red in tooth and claw".

Massimo is much more of a known quantity. With releases on Staalplaat, Fallt and Mego, his credibility among the art-laptop brigade is unassailable, but he's far from humorless and loves melodrama. Canova was a hard act to follow and ultimately Massimo couldn't quite compete, yet he was still powerful and impressive, albeit in different ways. He opened exuberantly with a football crowd style chanting "Massimo!, Massimo!", a daring and heroically tasteless start. Like Canova, he then briefly lapsed into generic electronica but soon began to play with surprisingly linear beats (linearity being something of a taboo in these circles).

Fat, unashamedly populist basslines dueled with digital noise in a dramatic, entertaining and exhilarating performance. Whereas Canova's tones were grey and harsh, Massimo was vividly colorful and energetic but also experimental. As a provocation (one of the most important aspects of Futurism), it largely failed, keeping a large crowd throughout, but he certainly didn't conform to "arty" or "intelligent" clichés, succeeding on his own terms. Frequently verging on the danceable (another violated taboo), my companion memorably described his sound as "... a cross between Timo Maas and Whitehouse".

Following the brutalism of Canova and the melodrama of Massimo seemed almost impossible, and so it proved. Fantasmagramma's performance was much closer to a classical recital than a Futurist provocation, and its quiet tones even succeeded in producing a bout of classical style pedantry from an audience member. After the noise of the previous performers, the stillness of Fantasmagramma's minute clicks and patterns was a violent contrast but was otherwise almost wholly routine.

No one who's heard microwave/clicks releases would find much that was new in the performance, yet it still produced an atmosphere of high-classical reverence. As the "by numbers" nature of the low-volume performance became clear, the attention of some listeners shifted to what was for some irritating though for others more interesting than Fantasmagramma. At the back of the room, two fan heaters whirred loudly, creating an interesting sonic contrast. The sound generated a tension, being more dynamic than the music and acting as an implied critique of its largely static nature, a tension that could have been productive if Fantasmagramma had chosen, Futurist-style, to engage with this dissonance.

Unfortunately this contrast was abruptly cut short by an officious and pedantic audience member getting up to turn off the heaters. Somehow, it's hard to imagine Russolo complaining about, rather than celebrating, the background noise of machinery, and, from a purist Futurist perspective, there could not be a more reactionary, conservative gesture—all the more so coming from someone wearing blue jeans. After this, the performance went its own pedestrian way. One of the growing clichés of this style is to interrupt quiet background effects with an intrusive bass sound, and, if not used sparingly and innovatively, this technique can seem very clumsy. Paradoxically, it was towards the end when the bass disappeared that a faint trace of a Futurist aesthetic emerged. In the last few minutes, a finely textured background rush of spectral sounds manifested the Futurist delight in sound as such, free of over-mannered attempts at style. Perhaps if presented outside a Futurist framework and not set alongside two such dynamic performers, Fantasmagramma would stand up better, but in this context it could not be more than easy crowd-pleasing.

So is there a new Italian Futurism in electronic music? Perhaps. Canova and Massimo certainly share a tendency to ignore conventions and taboos and, to differing extents, both embrace and celebrate noise. Neither issue manifestos or claim to be part of any movement, but at their best (seemingly live, rather than on record) they do embody avant-gardeist/Futurist disruption and provocation and are a healthy counter-weight to the creeping institutionalization of "the avant-garde in music" and art.

Alexei Monroe
April 2002

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