Existing squarely in the imaginary realm, Massimo e Massimo’s “Opterà” soundtracks its titular film on a “compilation EP [that draws] from the duo's time producing soundtracks for Italian thriller, horror, and giallo films throughout the 1970s.” While heavily indebted to the work of Goblin, Broadcast, and label Ghost Box among countless others, Massimo e Massimo’s catalogue holds its own, allowing its influences to be building blocks to create something deft, complex, and uncanny rather than the logical endpoint to an exercise in hauntology.
“Opterà” leaps and hushes in the same motion, propelling forward in psychic alignment towards the present. By the time we reach the second half, organ and string arrangements meet in ill-fated harmony, signaling the end to our brief journey into the unreal.
This unreality is plainly affixed on every track with references to films existing only as provocative titles and years. Given this context, Massimo e Massimo quietly but deliberately undermine our perception of authorship.
Is deception an inevitable byproduct of creation?
How does narrative affect the intake of a piece of media?
To what extent can a piece of media that knowingly places itself into the middle of a rich lineage of cultural forms innovate or illuminate something new about the form itself?
While these thoughts certainly remain fixed in my mind, the precise and unfaltering mood of the themes themselves assuage the work’s innate primordial dissonance, leaving me with only one question:
By re-tracing the strokes of one’s progenitors and crystalizing their flourishes into falsity, are we really that far removed from the fantasy that marketing necessitates?
The vision dissipates.
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About the Curator - Psetta
Psetta is an interdisciplinary artist & musician. Hailing from Portland, Maine, he curates community radio programming, flirting with mundane, innovative & surreal sounds.
With his radio show, So Fertile, he runs a biweekly submission-friendly playlist, “summer but I don’t like heat”, covering upcoming, obscure, and quintessential Lo-Fi, Electronic, Dream Pop, Ambient, Post-Punk, & Experimental music.
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