EPRC are the European duo Elisabetta Porcinai and Roberto Crippa, floating around somewhere between Berlin, Milan and London – unable to find a permanent home with their brown suitcases full of penicillin. Part of their restless approach may be due to artistic ambitions – poetry, visual art, performance, gallery installations and mutant goldfish masks are all a big part of their daily mushroom, and we’re lucky if they stand still long enough to generate sounds capable of being captured on tape.
The album Bodies (STRAY SIGNALS STRAY015) by its very title hints at the importance of the human ribcage and other attachments, allowing them to question reality and insert their funnels into alternative dimensions. What I do enjoy here is how they’ve evolved to the point where conventional structure is thrown out of the window, and each 4-5 minute cut exists long enough to open a window onto another plane of being, while we endure darkened electronica and stark utterances. With these stuttered and uncertain vocal segments – the reciter is unable to complete a sentence and uncertain of what she might be seeing, or what it means – we have a delicious impression of stern, lost souls trying to describe the unknown. The semi-black noisy non-specific electronic bursts also contribute to this impression. There’s also a chilling sense of indifference conveyed by the near-blank voice, which remains distant no matter how threatening the fierce electric pulsations may become. “What have we become?” Porcinai might be asking of our contemporary society and its mannered ironies, and it’s not even clear if we have enough humanity left to even care any more.
Very good. Since this arrived there’s been a follow-up EP called Sometimes. (12/08/2024)