Many Others – Aggression Of Paradox
8.3.17 by Jill Lloyd Flanagan

It seems that the Italian tape label Archivio Diafònico has a great aesthetic worthy of imitation. This is definitely harsh noise but it seems to mostly come from amplified acoustic sources which are blurred by distortion to inscrutability. But for me, it’s all an alien ear candy, it’s roughness giving a pleasing texture to it all.

After doing some research online, for there was almost no information in the cassette, I found that Many Others is a duo of Francesco Gregoretti and Olivier Di Placido playing apparently a prepared guitar and drums. It didn’t say on the website I found who was doing what… It’s a bit jazzier than some of the other releases on Archivio Diafònico’s Soundcloud but shares the same feeling of familiar acoustic sounds twisted and distorted enough to be wholly unrecognizable.

There’s a wonderful sense of dynamics in the improvisations between Gregoretti and Di Placido. This separates the tape from a lot of harsh noise which stays monotonously unpleasant and loud and can become like an unpleasant smell in a room rather than a living entity of sound. Here, the sudden shifts in sound and timber keep one unbalanced enough to remain disconcerted and keeps the music from settling into the background. Rather than a slight unpleasant smell, this tape becomes more like the sudden onset of nausea which subsides forgotten and then arises again stronger and unignorable. I hope someone is jamming this in a boombox in some sort of terrifying squalid Italian squat.

Go ahead and grab a copy.