Maurizio Opalio - Way up to the "Enfer" [Opax Records - 2007]This is the first solo effort by one half of Italian improvised and otherworldly project My cat is an alien. Taking quite a different tack from his main project, it presents three tracks of hypnotically strum and hover acoustic guitar patterns. I guess its best described as walls of haunted dark guitar folk, which cascades down into slower picked guitar moments. This is the album’s second release, it appeared in ltd Cdr format last year- here an extra track is added, an 8 page booklet of Maurizio’s poetry and charcoal drawn cover each is individually numbered and signed lathe-cut LP. Sadly it's only ltd to 50 copies, which as is a real pity as it shows an different and rewarding side to Maurizio’s playing and composition skills- we’ll have to hope it appears at a later date in an unltd form. Anyway on with the music the first two original tracks last around the fifteen minute mark each, with the extra track scraping in bellow the eight minute mark. Each track follows a similar pattern with Maurizio dark walls of acoustic guitar rising in cluttered, often strangely harmonic hazes of sound- with odd discordant edges appearing here & there. Sometimes it calms and slowers to picked showers of acoustic sound, but most of the time it feels like ones down, toppling over and over through the hypnotic patterns. To me it doesn’t feel very spacey as one might expected- it’s more barren emotional, having a rainy & storm day vibe to it all. A very worthwhile release that of course will be of interest Alien Cat heads, but also those who enjoy dense acoustic guitar works with a distinctive haunted vibe- but act quick!    Roger Batty
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