My Cat Is An Alien / Steve Roden - Cosmic Debris Volume II CD

"CD reissue of the second installment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. The Vol.II sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Californian visual and sound artist Steve Roden. What makes this collaborative release so peculiar is the natural interactive exchange occurred between the artists, and that came out from the concept behind the experience itself.
Roden's contribution thus represents the unique experience of hearing him literally 'playing' guitar chords. His first track, "E-bows and Rainbows", developes through the minimal and reiterated sound architecture of Roden's so-called 'possible landscapes', where singular source materials such as objects and field recordings are abstracted through electronic processes to generate new audio spaces, characterizing the artist's aesthetic in sound works; the following "My dog is a Yufo" is so far a pretty unheard aspect of Roden's ability to shape a fascinating intimate piece only with an old electric guitar and his own fingers, and it also demonstrates how a true artist can re-create his own personal universe, no matter what kind of source utilized.
On their side, MCIAA deliver another piece of 'cosmic debris', centered on multilayered echoes of voice, toy piano, space drones raising from a distant horizon, and their own physical gestures performed during the recording, which reproduce themselves through the air, re-play and give birth to echoes of real time that overcomes its own essence, becoming field recording itself, mirror and spectre of its immutability. Their track entitled "Everything waves like cosmic debris" also features Ramona Ponzini's Japanese bells contribution.
The five-volumes series "Cosmic Debris" features My Cat Is An Alien alongside Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino, Mats Gustafsson, Loren Connors & his Haunted House band.
Each CD cover artwork reproduces the full image and details of the acrylic paintings created by Roberto Opalio for each copy of the original vinyl edition on MCIAA's own Opax Records."
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Review by Tom Ridge, 2008, The Wire (UK)

"The Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio have released a huge number of recordings under their My Cat Is An Alien name in their fearless pursuit of freeform dissonance and vast, abstract space rock. On the aptly titled Cosmic Debris series, originally released as very limited editions in vinyl form, they are cast as both performers and curators, sharing each of these three discs with artists whose own pursuit of noise ranges from the artistic to the cathartic. Each volume is divided into roughly 20 minutes per artist (one side apiece on vinyl), which on the one hand is a constraint, but on the other streamlines and focuses each performance.
So on Volume I, Text of Light's "033103 Paris" seems to cut in some time after the start with a clatter of percussion and a surge of noise. Originally convened to provide live, improvised soundtracks to the films of Stan Brakhage, this ensemble, consisting of Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, Ulrich Krieger, Dj Olive and Tim Barnes, explode with a formidable combination of free jazz skronk, seismic percussion, tonal drone and searing guitar noise. A lone female vocal sample towards the finish drifts in as if from another world, one quite alien to this blasted terrain. The accompanying My Cat Is An Alien track begins with sparsely deployed percussion, keyboards and guitar drones then builds into an insistent, trancelike piece of chanted repetition.
Volume II showcases California's Steve Roden on guitar, whose two tracks lie somewhere between tonal experiment and Ambient minimalism. His E-bowed drones and fragile picking sound elegant and poised but come also with a sense of dreamlike detachment. The Opalios' "Everything waves like cosmic debris" rather overshadows Roden's delicacy with its near cosmic sense of vastness, like Tibetan Buddhist chanting colliding with Ligeti's "Lux Aeterna". It's an astounding display of improvised brinkmanship, teetering on total collapse but somehow staying its own umpredictable course.
Finally Keiji Haino makes himself emphatically heard on Volume III, and you can't help but wonder if the Opalio brothers have been overambitious in pairing themselves with him when he's on this kind of form. Progressing from a maelstrom of sibilant, howling electronic noise to an extraordinarily physical form of screened and barked vocals, his performance is absolutely spellbinding. After this, the final MCIAA track, "Everything crashes like cosmic debris", seems at first a bit anticlimactic, but the dense swirl of siren calls and deep reverberating noise drones builds to a satisfying finish: a bold summation of the duo at their intense best."