My Cat Is An Alien / Elliptical Noise samplers

from ROBERTO OPALIO 'Aurōra Coelestis' LP + Digital Download (Opax Records, October 2014 / OPX036)

***NYC legendary WFMU radio - "Record of the Day" Oct 29, 2014***

Physically and digitally available at Elliptical Noise via Bandcamp:
https://ellipticalnoise.bandcamp.com/album/aurora-coelestis

Fourth soloist album and debut on vinyl format by musician and visual artist ROBERTO OPALIO of radical avant-garde duo My Cat Is An Alien. ‘Aurora Coelestis’ presents two new instantaneous compositions for glockenspiel and voice, recorded in March 2014 at his Alien Studio for audiovisual arts, Torino, Italy. For the first time his musical work is mainly instrumental: ‘Aurora Coelestis’ is Roberto Opalio’s homage to early minimalism. The work is intended to be listened to at soft volume level, quietly in a room. The same glockenspiel used in the recording has then been cut into pieces to become the core of the spectacular art gallery edition of the album. 

“Roberto Opalio, the more sinister half of My Cat Is An Alien, has finally released a non-lathe solo LP in order to demonstrate his mastery of space junk. The two parts of the title track, “Aurora Coelestis”, are incredible glides through the darkest recesses of solar system. The music was created on glockenspiel, then run through Roberto's homemade electronics in a way that extends celestial glimmering into eruptive plains of infinity. Cosmic burbles worthy of Gong mix with expansive tones that make me think of what Richard Brautigan's Machines of Loving Grace might sound like. It's almost the same as listening to one of those computers that generates sounds from stellar radiation. Beautiful, cold and deep. It will make all of your bones feel very soft.

The third piece, “Hic et Nunc” is a piece for manipulated vocals. The title is Latin for “Here and Now” and may refer to either the Gong-related UK band of the '70s, or the impermanence of language, or both. The music is like being sucked through a long tube that lights up and resonates as you pass along sections of it. Alien lips quiver nearby and you can smell a kind of breath you have never smelled before. It's a wonderful trip through bubble time, and one suspects it would be an excellent soundtrack for your next bout with hallucinogens. If that's not your thing, just lie down in the dark and concentrate hard on the sounds. You'll be flying soon enough. Have a nice ride.” –BYRON COLEY, 2014

This is a private press, handcrafted by Roberto and Maurizio Opalio and released on their own legendary Opax Records. 165 gram black vinyl housed in tri-fold jacket made of fine art 250 gram clear blue textured cardboard, with 12”x16” full color folded cover/insert featuring a portrait of the artist taken by Maurizio Opalio on front and a photographic image by Roberto Opalio on the inside, plus full liner notes. Foreword insert by Byron Coley.
The album comes with 3 collector’s editions cover art: each cover features 1 of 3 different 4”x6” original photographs shot by Roberto Opalio mounted on back, representing diverse perspectives of the glockenspiel used by the artist during the session. Handnumbered and handstamped. Limited Private Press of 200.

http://www.mycatisanalien.com/news.htm

ROBERTO OPALIO 'Aurōra Coelestis' (album sampler)

from MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & CÉDRIC STEVENS 'Abstract Expressionism For The Ears' 3LP + Digital Download (Opax Records, October 2014 / OPX037)

Physically and digitally available at Elliptical Noise via Bandcamp:
https://ellipticalnoise.bandcamp.com/album/abstract-expressionism-for-the-ears

Housed in heavy duty full color laminated jacket. Includes Digital Download card of entire album. Limited to only 300 copies. Artwork and all titles curated by visual artist Roberto Opalio.

Debut release of the new collaborative project of outsider duo of musicians and visual artists MY CAT IS AN ALIEN and Belgian electronic composer CÉDRIC STEVENS. Over 2 hours of new music as human ears have never heard before and will never do if you miss this unique chance! --

In February 2014 brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio aka My Cat Is An Alien spent a residency in Brussels for a long studio session in trio with Cédric Stevens (aka Acid Kirk), who recently collaborated in Fennesz's new album. With the support of La Communauté Française De Belgique the entire session is now available in its entirety on MCIAA’s legendary Opax Records, in the form of this colossal triple LP set entitled 'Abstract Expressionism For The Ears'. The session is made of long-form pieces instantaneously composed, recorded and mixed by the trio during those incredibly intense days and nights of recordings.
Dreamy architectures of sounds, floating sculptures of abstract drones and cannibal noise, modal piano, ancestral strings and electronic futurism, celestial music of the Spheres, imbued with impressive textures of vocal exorcisms by Roberto Opalio. Again your ears won’t find any point of reference when listening to this transcendent and essential work!

Instantaneously composed, performed and produced by My Cat Is An Alien & Cédric Stevens. Roberto Opalio: wordless vocalizations, alientronics, pedal effects, electronic devices, vertical piano; Maurizio Opalio: self-made string instrument, pedal effects, cymbal, piano strings, Roberto’s piano real-time loops; Cédric Stevens: electric guitar, analogue modular system, minimoog, various analogue pedals. 

Tracklisting:
Side A. Tasting The New Ether (22:25)
Side B. Intersection Of Shadows (25:04)
Side C. When The Sun Goes Down There’s Nothing Left To Tune - part I (19:14)
Side D. When The Sun Goes Down There’s Nothing Left To Tune - part II (17:31)
Side E. Shifting At Zero Gravity (25:02)
Side F-1. The Ineffable Call Of Tomorrow (14:46)
Side F-2. Just A Tone Of White Over Blue (4:36)

http://www.mycatisanalien.com/news.htm
http://subliminaltoycrash.net/


MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & CÉDRIC STEVENS 'Abstract Expressionism For The Ears' (album sampler)

Side A of My Cat Is An Alien's new album "RE-SI-STEN-ZA!"
Out November 30, 2016. 
Private Press LP. Special "Metallic Gold Wax" edition of 300.

"RE-SI-STEN-ZA!"

My Cat Is An Alien "RE-SI-STEN-ZA!"

ROBERTO OPALIO - 'Once you'll touch the sky you will never return to dust' CD / DL (Elliptical Noise)
https://ellipticalnoise.bandcamp.com/album/once-youll-touch-the-sky-you-will-never-return-to-dust

Audio: excerpt from the album by Roberto Opalio
WATCH OFFICIAL VIDEO: youtu.be/23ifzOYWljA

Copyright Ⓒ Roberto Opalio. All rights reserved. 
Ⓟ & Ⓒ 2018 Opax Records / Elliptical Noise

TRACKLIST 
1. Preludio (03:12) 
2. Once you'll touch the sky you will never return to dust (46:46) 

‘Once you'll touch the sky you will never return to dust’ is the fifth studio album by ROBERTO OPALIO (“the more sinister half of MY CAT IS AN ALIEN” according to BYRON COLEY). 
Along with My Cat Is An Alien’s ‘The Sky With Broken Arms’, this solo release officially opens the duo’s 20th Anniversary in 2018–a year rich of exciting projects, collaborations and releases. 
‘Once you'll touch the sky you will never return to dust’ is a new 1-hour long instantaneous composition performed with a prepared mini-keyboard, a handmade shortwave receiver and Roberto Opalio’s patented alientronics and wordless vocalizations. It is a masterpiece of modern minimalism, an ecstatic voyage where time and space lose their meaning, thus glorifying the poetic lyricism of the “here and now”, that “eternal now” that other visionary artists and vanguards of the past have always dealt with, from FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE to MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS. “Towards the Sun”, headed ARTHUR RIMBAUD. “Space Is The Place”, asserted SUN RA.
CD comes in full-color gatefold digisleeve. The not-compressed mastering devised by MCIAA provides a natural, immersive listening experience. Cover art features one of the most stunning paintings by Roberto Opalio, created just before the album was sent to the pressing plant. Artwork design by MCIAA.

Once you'll touch the sky you will never return to dust

ROBERTO OPALIO Once You'll Touch The Sky (EXCERPT)

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'The Sky With Broken Arms' CD / DL (Elliptical Noise)
https://ellipticalnoise.bandcamp.com/album/the-sky-with-broken-arms

Audio: excerpt from the album by My Cat Is An Alien
Video: cinematic poetry film by Roberto Opalio

Copyright Ⓒ My Cat Is An Alien. All rights reserved. 
Ⓟ & Ⓒ 2018 Opax Records / Elliptical Noise

TRACKLIST 
1. The Sky With Broken Arms (36:39)

‘The Sky With Broken Arms’ is the brand new studio album by MY CAT IS AN ALIEN which officially opens the duo’s 20th ANNIVERSARY in 2018–a year rich of exciting projects, collaborations and releases. Brothers MAURIZIO and ROBERTO OPALIO have been active as radical instantaneous composers since the beginning in early 1998, their work always characterized by the willingness to challenge oneself and throw oneself forward towards the unknown realms of art, intended as the highest projection and expression of the self. This ongoing, imperative challenge brought MCIAA’s musical research towards constant innovation, making each of their 200+ musical releases a step onward, and their entire opus simply unique. “[..] there are few other artists who have been so unwaveringly challenging and iconoclastic for as long as the Opalios" (Anthony D’Amico, BRAINWASHED). The deep authenticity of their sound has always shined throughout the large number of collaborations set up during the years with vanguards such as SONIC YOUTH, JIM O'ROURKE, KEIJI HAINO, CHRISTIAN MARCLAY, MATS GUSTAFSSON, JEAN-MARC MONTERA, NELS CLINE, LOREN CONNORS, among many others. MCIAA’s rare live performances mirror the brothers’ vision of the creative act as the most powerful shamanic ritual, bringing together their performative action with the diverse aspects of their intermedia activities like the “cinematic poetry” films by Roberto Opalio. Their idiosyncratic improvising skill and extraordinary psychic connection have been under the radar of thousands of visitors during the opening days of the 57th VENICE ART BIENNALE in May 2017, when MCIAA activated the Studio Venezia project at the French Pavilion invited by artist XAVIER VEILHAN and curator CHRISTIAN MARCLAY. 
The new album ‘The Sky With Broken Arms’ is therefore a further step ahead into the realm of the unknown, where the music made of minimal, dreamy guitar chords and eerie wordless vocals over a dense layer of crackling noise comes out of a strong conceptual idea. 
As Roberto Opalio’s foreword to the work reads “A winter day two years ago I found out that an entire section of my vinyl records collection was completely ruined by an inexplicable oxidation process. [..] As a first reaction, I decided not to play those records ever again... and that I did, for a long time. ‘Til one night, exhausted, I felt the absolute urgency to listen to one of those LPs whose musical content got buried by the vinyl surface noise. In that moment the shocking epiphany: [..] slowly, I began to perceive that not only the old, beloved sounds I was used to were all still there, but also that the layer of ground noise obliged me to an even more attentive and active listening; thus I was discovering very subtle sound details now claiming their own being and pretending their own space. The idea of a new MCIAA album came out of this enlightenment. A new concept concerning the representation of music on the one hand and its perception on the other. A music so essential and precious as to be discovered by the listener little by little, because hidden by a blanket of crackling noise, which I obtained from the blank grooves of my damaged vinyls. Thus, here we are: infinite spaces of disintegration and psycho-existential ecstasy… essentially, spaces of non-limited, non-stoppable Poetry”. 
The not-compressed, not-balanced mastering devised by MCIAA provides a natural, immersive listening experience. CD comes in full-color gatefold digisleeve. Cover art features an intense photography shot on 35mm slide film by Roberto Opalio. Artwork design by MCIAA.

The Sky With Broken Arms

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The Sky With Broken Arms (EXCERPT)

Elliptical Noise is a platform and record label born to support and spread the musical universe of My Cat Is An Alien, aka brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio

My Cat Is An Alien "RE-SI-STEN-ZA!"

elliptical noise records