Around the same time (1980) that Merzbow was making his Hyper Music 2 and his Metal Acoustic Music, later to be released as cassettes on his ZSF Produkt label, the Italian Maurizio Bianchi came up with this – Computers S.P.A. (VERLAG SYSTEM VS037), which he created with the use of a Korg MS synth-20 with some additional elements from tape, and thereby unleashed Hell. Where Merzbow often seemed obsessed with kinky dangerous sex and flaunted his predilections to provoke the audience, Maurizio Bianchi was making a record that declared outright war on everything; between them I suppose these two dominant figures of harsh noise comprehensively covered the twin axioms of Sex and Death.
Actually M.B., as he was also billed, wasn’t quite as bellicose as I’m making out, but I’m trying to account for the sheer onslaught of noise from this LP that resembles machine-gun fire and alien laser-beams from hostile flying saucers, and of course the relentless attack of this bombardment that doesn’t give the listener a chance to do, say, or think anything. Most listeners became instant victims of shell-shock and sent to a combat hospital, you’d like to think. There’s a para or two of verbiage written in Bianchi’s quite high-minded and uncompromising style, and I get into a tangle trying to follow it, but I think it may represent a “dramatic denunciation” of academic electronic music from the large institutions and universities that had been manifesting their memory banks after the war. On the other hand, M.B.’s record might in fact be the exact opposite of all that, and emerge as a joyful celebration of such music. At any rate, it’s emerging for me that Bianchi is an autodidact who gets his results with a very solid hands-on method, shoot first and ask questions later, rather than excessive theorising or academic study that can lead one into paralysis. He admits his music is “idiosyncratic” and that there’s a lot of unhealthy emotions – hysteria, anger, frustration, irrational thought, even forms of mental illness – woven into the teeming, hyper-bubbly array of barbed wire. The press notes welcome this of course (they are firm supporters of M.B.) and praise the man they call the “undisputed father of…apocalyptic avantgarde”.
It’s also of note that despite the word “Computers” forming part of the title, it isn’t really computer music – unless you count the Korg as a mini-computer – and is more likely to be inspired by the works of Lejaren Hiller or Xenakis. At any rate, this listener is finding Computers S.P.A. an exciting and exhilarating spin, and even if it’s not very uplifting it’s certainly more palatable than the morose and despondent Armaghedon which this label reissued in 2021. While I’ve been slow to embrace the charms of this Italian maestro, this particular abrasive bruiser might be the release that tips the balance and sends me scurrying forth to endure more harshness from this rugged self-taught pioneer, who is starting to assume the proportions of a loner, an outsider, living by his own lights and beholden to no man’s belief system.
I see the original C60 tape was issued with unique artworks – cover made from a page torn out a magazine, and making use the typewriter and the dymo label (both now antique methods of lettering) for the title and credits. A copy now would cost you about 200 bones, even if you could find one for sale. For this reissue – another piece in the jigsaw of reissued industrial cassette music which this Spanish label specialises in – there’s a new cover collage created by Bianchi, Siegmar Fricke, and Alonos Urbanos. The luxury edition includes a CDR by Friecke in his Pharmakustik guise, on which he “decomposes” the original cassette. From 3 May 2023.