In the endless avalanche of music that comes my way in both physical and digital formats, it sometimes happens that some releases get buried. Some deservedly so, others not so. Occasionally, I'll stick MP3 files onto my MP3 player with a view to mulling them over while in transit. However, unless I make a point of skipping to them, it sometimes takes a while for these to come around on the playlist. This is the case with this album, which came on soon after I boarded a bus into town the other day.
I had no idea what it as, but it was pretty nasty – in the best sort of way. On checking the track info, I discovered it was Sado Mundo, a noise trio featuring guests including Bearsuit mainstay Harold Nono.
Out of sequence from the track-listing, the song that had assailed my ears was 'Bordello', which is built round a low-slung groove-laden bassline, over which distorted vocals, by turns a seductive crooning growl and outright nasty snarling twist out some partially intelligible tale of depravity. I can't really think of anything that it reminds me of, but perhaps the closest I can get is Pig circa 'Red, Raw & Sore.' Immediately, I was hooked, and the rest of the album is of a similar calibre: as an exercise in sonic sadism, 'Standards of Pain' is up there. No, not there... oh, never mind.
There are moments of eerie, disquieting ambience and experimentalism reminiscent of late 70s / early 80s experimental and industrial acts, the likes of DAF, Test Dept and even the masters of the (anti-)style, Throbbing Gristle.
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A mystical eastern vibe permeates 'Holiday is Salo', which builds pulsing waves of pink noise and layers of cavernous drones and distortion that ebb and flow. Grating , clanking and torturous sounds rattle and creak from the speakers on 'Mania'. It's not pleasant, but it is testing. A more tranquil air descends when gentle chimes and washes of softer sounds take over on 'Ninth Train', and elsewhere, 'Rita Calderoni' has an almost spiritual quality, evoking cavernous cathedrals and reverence.
'Nuda Per Satana' is perhaps the most accessible and conventional track on the album, but is hardly mainstream or commercial, a warped take on space-age cabaret with a distinctly European flavour. Jesper Olsen comes on like a French Iggy Pop on 'Sombre', crooning over a woozy bossa nova that eventually subsides and gives way to a glitchy, scratchy ambience, the atmosphere, bleak, desolate and desperate. Elsewhere, the listener's aural receptors assailed by brutal blasts of mangled, distorted vocals and oscillating pink noise, pure sonic torture.
Oh yes, it hurts so good... the only thing to do is submit.
SadoMundo on MySpace
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