“Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.” [Coco Chanel]

It is like when, after walking along the wall of a building, you reach the corner and you can look at both sides: the one you have just walked along and the other side, new, still unexplored. You carry the sounds, thoughts, words, light and shadows that have inhabited you that far, but everything changes. It is the perspective that is new. It is a known and near space-time, that is, at the same time, unpublished, not easy to catalogue. Suddenly, you perceive everything with different eyes and ears. Here, "Doors” by Marco MAL Loprieno is a bit like this.

It is no coincidence that it is Paul Virilio's "Ville Panique" MAL refers to from the second tune of the album. His awareness, even before the pandemic, of how issues such as the climate crisis, growing inequalities and discrimination, the digital revolution, the weakness of our democracies cannot be deferred ... many artists are giving voice, each with their own means of expression, to the concerns that accompany us at this turn of the century. In "Ville Panique", MAL gives back a suspended time, as if waiting for a solution, with the sax chasing in counterpoint the liquid, fleeting and disturbing atmospheres created by electronics.

In two other pieces, the powerful words of Michel Foucault ("Heterotopies") and Jacques Lacan ("La Mort") vibrate within their own sound, even preceding their meaning. And old and new thoughts chase each other, fragmenting and recomposing themselves in the hybridization between electronics, wind instruments and utterances. By proposing, not by imposing, a way of listening at variable levels. Never distracted. Not always easy, but free.

"Arpa" is perhaps the most abstract tune. Light, incorporeal, like a gust of wind ... A quilt, or a carpet, on which a series of sounds have been delicately laid, which then is as if they develop independently, autonomously. Almost consoling each other. Softly counteracting to the voices of the winds, at times imperious, at times more uncertain: balancing between an arrogant imposition and a timid search of the way.

"Fearless" is a trip. Without fear, or rather to defeat not one, but a thousand fears ... The sax is a small light flickering in the dark of the room, the one that was enough to ward off nightmares as a child. Or it is the song with which we took courage when, alone, we crossed the cold, deserted and badly lit city. Music in the head. Your music. So the crows, the bamboos, the bells, the screeches, the creaking of the world out there, how can they possibly harm you?

And that's how MAL comes out free. Also crossing 'sacred territories' with light irony and genuine affection, as in the tribute / non tribute to John Cage in "Uncaged". Or, on the contrary, in "Lies" not fearing to risk a lot, when he mixes the lies of 'The Donald' - compulsively reiterated and leading to a paroxysm - to pressing percussions and very pop references (both electronic and instrumental). Playing with the most diverse areas, starting from science fiction. Ça va sans dire.

[Pat Lugo, Brussels, June 2020] 
credits
released July 14, 2020

DOORS

taken from Jana Rush - "Painful Enlightenment" (ZIQ428 out August 13th 2021 on Planet Mu)

https://planetmu.bleepstores.com/release/224365-jana-rush-painful-enlightenment

Chicago's Jana Rush returns with "Painful Enlightenment", an intense emotional rollercoaster of disfigured samples, quivering electronics and vagrant percussion. As implied by the title, the album is a document of her own personal growth through struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, a glimpse into a dark period of her life amid learning the art of letting go. Her debut for Planet Mu is the follow-up to her twisted "Pariah" LP on Objects Limited. It's euphonic and uplifting, even blissful, yet equally chilling, and at times a difficult listening experience. Jana says "This album is not a footwork album. It's more like dark experimental listening music, an opportunity to be myself without judgement!"

The album opens up with the pessimistic "Moanin’", its gorgeous, blazing sax solo pulled back and forth like it was being played through a possessed tape recorder. Baneful bass pulsates over dozens of maniacal vocal samples on "Suicidal Ideation", an absolutely mesmerizing collage of beauty and terror with a runtime of nine minutes. Moody guitar plucks cry over an intricate bed of micropercussion and erratic low-end blasts on the title track, one of the more sombre moments of the album. At the halfway mark, the record takes a dark, twisted turn, as "Disorientation" well, disorients, with its thick layers of untraceable alien sounds unfolding and contracting back into themselves. Thick layers of time-stretched textures and bewildering rhythms meet masterfully placed snares on "Intergalactic Battle", featuring Teklife’s DJ Paypal. On "Drivin’ Me Insane", Jana and collaborator Nancy Fortune stretch three words back and forth and inside-out over the course of three minutes, using every last gasp and sibilance possible. The album closes with Paypal making his second appearance. "Just a Taste" is an encore featuring many of the fundamental sonics that make up the LP, haunting horns and paranoid voices struggle to speak over fluctuating low-end harmonics. 

An established veteran from the world of ghetto house and juke who cut her teeth on Dance Mania records in the late nineties, Jana has the stripes, so to call her an outsider would be fictitious, yet she is a true unicorn within the history of that realm and becomes more and more alienated from formulas and trends on each new record she creates. "Painful Enlightenment" is full of dense, intricate abstractions, paired with rapidly moving structures and is unlikely to sound the same twice, as every listen exposes new layers of its vibrant, transcendental details.

Painful Enlightenment (mp3s)

Jana Rush - Mynd Fuc

Submarine Walk

Marco MAL Loprieno: piano, electronics, percussion, sampling, voice, bass, ableton live, push, instant composition
Pat Lugo: photo

NEVERLAND

MONEY MONEY

One musician. 2 saxophones, bass clarinet, trumpet, kalimba. Effects and Looper. It's all.

Hikikomori

Violent Freedom

Baron Samedi, the vodoo loa of death and change
Marco MAL LOPRIENO: electronics, field recordings, instant composition
Pat LUGO: photo

BARON SAMEDI

always follow the WHITE LINES !
Marco MAL LOPRIENO: electronics, percussion, instant composition
Pat LUGO: photo

WHITE LINES

Nick Mateo  - piano                                   @NickMateomusic
Ni! - kalimba, bass-clarinet, trumpet       @Ni-Ni-Shrubbery

Nick Mateo - Reach (feat Ni!)

Marco MAL Loprieno: Instant Composition; Electronics; Voice; Percussion
Pat LUGO: Photo
Shamanism can remedy the evils of the world

SHAMAN

Composition & Performance inspired by the work of Paul Virilio "Ville Panique Ailleurs Commence Ici". 

Marco MAL LOPRIENO: instant composition; sopranino & baritone saxes; ROLI lightpad blocks & seaboard block; Ableton LIVE; PUSH: electronics; sampling
Pat LUGO: photo
Andrew WEATHERS: mastering

Music4Climate 01

VILLE PANIQUE

Donald Trump administration climate change and environmental  policies: lies, lies, lies...

Marco MAL LOPRIENO: concept, instant composition, baritone sax, electronics, kaossilator, Ableton LIVE, PUSH, sampling, percussion, field recordings
Pat LUGO: photo
Andrew WEATHERS: mastering

LIES

an electronic harp's strings play gently moved by the wind....

Marco MAL LOPRIENO: contra-alto clarinet; alto sax; sopranino sax; electronics; sampling; instant composition; Ableton LIVE, PUSH
Pat LUGO: photo
Andrew WEATHERS: mastering

ARPA

LA MORT, Death, Life and Death. Difficult to live Life without considering Death.Taking Life as a concept, listening to the powerful voice of Jacques Lacan

Marco MAL LOPRIENO: instant composition; tenor sax; hulusi; sheng; ROLI Seaboard; gongs; field recordings; sampling; electronics; Ableton LIVE; PUSH
Pat LUGO: photo
Andrew WEATHERS: mastering
Jacques Lacan: "prendre la vie comme un concept" (take life as a concept)

LA MORT

Time becomes Space here; listen to beautiful voice of Michel Foucault

Marco MAL LOPRIENO: instant composition; electronics; tenor trombone; sampling; percussion; field recordings; Ableton LIVE; PUSH
Pat LUGO: photo
Andrew WEATHERS: mastering

HETEROTOPIES

HÉTEROTOPIES

Opening DOORS to my universe, DOORS of perceptions, DOORS to Reality ... which is not very nice at the moment

Marco MAL LOPRIENO: instant composition; sopranino sax; contra-alto clarinet; sampling; electronics; Ableton LIVE; PUSH
Pat LUGO: photo
Andrew WEATHERS: mastering

the universal ZEBRA, mistery of the night, love/fear of the dark... Fire in the Lake

Marco MAL LOPRIENO: instant composition, sopranino sax, kalimba, field recordings, sampling, percussion, electronics, ableton LIVE, PUSH
Pat LUGO: photo
Andrew WEATHERS: mastering

FIRE IN THE LAKE

ZEBRA

EXIT_LAB is a laboratory, a place to meet and an informal platform dedicated to explore and promote art, performance and social action.

it is located in Anderlecht, Belgium (EXIT_LOFT) it was created 20 years ago by Pat Lugo and Marco MAL Loprieno.

Marco MAL Loprieno - instant composition, wind instruments,  toys, field recordings, sampling  and electronics; PAT LUGO - voice, photo, text and visual.  
"IN HISTORY AS IN NATURE WHAT IS ROTTEN IS THE LABORATORY OF LIFE " [Karl Marx, The Capital, book I, chap. XV ]

LIES

EXIT_LAB

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