V/A - Italia NO! Contaminazioni No Wave Italian
(Spittle)

No Wave: a fledgling movement originating on the Lower East side of New York in 1978 and born out of art school students who couldn’t play and perhaps couldn’t relate to the CBGB scene that began a few years prior. Brian Eno’s No New York was a major companion piece shining the spotlight to bands like DNA, Mars, The Contortions and Teenage Jesus And The Jerks. While those bands barely lasted 2 years, their influence is still rippling through underground music today.
Who would’ve thought the same influence would spread to Italy? Small occurrences like DNA and the Lounge Lizards visiting Italy in 1981 augmented the reach of the No New York comp and before long, bands were sprouting up mainly in the music-centered cities of Bologna and Florence. Italia NO! takes on the much needed task of telling the unheard tale about Italian post-punk and No Wave in the early to mid 80's. The tracklist and sounds exhibited here is dizzying and wide-ranging to say the last. Funkwagen (so bad it’s good?) give us bastardized jazz and guitar wonk in the vein of the Contortions, Die Form conjure up bleak and industrialized chaos and Eazycon work with synth wave but with an extra chilly layer of desolation. Expect plenty of angular guitars, pseudo funk skronk, primitive synths, herky-jerk percussion all rounded out by layers of noise.
The quality of all the bands represented here is quite high and many if not all, will be new to you. Well done by Spittle to nicely chronicle a scene many didn’t even know existed. A defining document for sure. (Dom)
Check out a track here.