MO & friends collide against projects from outside, in a series of thematic clashes.
Instruments Vs Laptop is the first one!
orqan & E.M. Spazz Unit Vs Venta Protesix, Served in a bi-colored tape with a special j-card and double illustration made by SafeSpace and FinePiano
In the White Side orqan & E.M. Spazz Unit set the territory with their arsenal of instruments, crafting a flow of harshness made of piercing drum machines and other devices, tape layers from obscure powerviolence bands and actual noisecore displayed by the aggressive drumming and scream by E.M.
Spazz Unit.
A chaotic and messy bunch of muddy frequencies and cables, attempt to take form in a shapeless flood of violence.
The Pink Side shows Venta Protesix, Italian master of laptop noise, decimating the survivals with his pure digital and emotionless anti-music. Cold layers of noise attack your brain like a surgical tool, obliterating your mind in this high level dissociation championship.
Abstraction in his pure raw sorrow. By far the heaviest and harshest release on Musica Orizzontale. Limited to 15 copies.
Tell us about the genesis of your project. How did you get to where you are now?
orqan2: I moved from my hometown for a job opportunity. As I was looking for new friends, I contacted orqan1 because he played in a band I already knew and I wanted to buy some of their merch, So we met in person and while talking we discovered that both wanted to start a noise project so we did it.
orqan1: And it’s been almost 6 years now! I think it’s already turned out quite good for a random project made for having fun.
E.M. Spazz Unit: I have been playing around with analog gear and digital DAWs for some time, with low effort and scarce results. When I started making something that in my opinion was worth sharing, I started this project and started contacting labels and so on. The rest is history!
What should a song or piece of art communicate in your opinion?
orqan1: For me Art is the expression of an internal impulse that an individual conveys outside of their brain.
E.M. Spazz Unit is preparing an exhibition called Art Itself Vomits, you should check it out when it’s live!
E.M. Spazz Unit: Yeah, the virtual exhibition “Art Itself Vomits” kinda summarizes my view about the whole “artistic” enterprise. About the question, I do not think music or “art” should necessarily communicate something. A lot of music I hear has its meaning equivalent to its aesthetic pleasantness, in relation to genre. There is no special meaning to be conveyed by the artist in the first place. And that is ok.
Who were your top 3 artists last year?
Venta Protesix: Obviously myself and I tell you this because I’m extremely sincere.
Anyway what do you mean by artists?
orqan1: I’d say S280F, Slikback and Portal were some of my favorites.
E.M. Spazz Unit: Himukalt, God Is War and Huerco S.
What do you do when you’re feeling uninspired?
orqan1: Nothing. I usually scroll Instagram with one of my several accounts watching at images. I don’t really want to force myself and find inspiration when I’m not inspired.
E.M. Spazz Unit: I agree with orqan. If I feel I don’t need to craft sounds, I won’t.
What are your 2022 projects and goals?
orqan1: No goals, but we have a lot of projects we are working on at the moment. We just did this release and a Mixtape for a radio station. We have four other collaborations in the books and few other tracks in the making and some of those are gonna be released in 2022. Hopefully, we’re also gonna perform some more live shows.
E.M. Spazz Unit: Some splits and hopefully a live set with some actual drums. We’ll see what happens!
Favorite movie or TV show?
orqan1: I really like Paranoia Agent from Satoshi Kon
orqan2: π by Aronfosky.
E.M. Spazz Unit: Live footage of Survival Research Laboratories.
Tell us about your latest release and how it came about
orqan1: This release is the result of different inputs and ideas merging together. With our label MO we had this idea of doing a series of thematic splits with projects from inside our collective versus projects from outside of it. And a theme I was really into exploring was instruments vs laptop
Us and E.M. already did a split together last year on Urbsounds and we were talking about doing more stuff together. At the same time we all like the works of Venta Protesix, who is well known for using only a laptop for his project.
It took a while to put all the ideas together but here we are.
E.M. Spazz Unit: I worked wonderfully with orqan on a previous release, so I was just willing to do something else together. I love the concept they proposed to me, and I am very happy about how this collaborative effort of ours came out.
Venta Protesix: Surely I must have left one of my Max patches open which went on by itself while I was downloading Portuguese movies from the internet.
What is something you would want to change in the music and entertainment industry?
orqan1: I already hate the fact it’s an industry. I can’t even tell you how many things I consider wrong and not functioning about it. Everything is so fast and disposable and, like every industry, the product is way less important than grabbing the target/audience.
However, outside of this project that I do for fun, I still try to survive within the music industry so I am too (like most of the humans) really hypocritical.
orqan2: The fact that artists (at some levels) use all their weapons to just break in it and when they are in, they’re not always prepared for what’s coming, or they figure out that there’s someone that wants to push ’em till they collapse by themself or disappoint the crowd. Also it would be nice if the crowd were more curious and aware about listening. These days the majority of the people who are not strictly mainstream-listeners are art involved: musicians, dancers, performers, gallerists, ecc. I think that it’s not the aim of art. It shouldn’t be for the sake of itself.
Ps: For sure I would like to erase the NFTs market.
E.M. Spazz Unit: This is a complex subject. I don’t think E.M. has much to do with “Music” and the entertainment industry, but more with a self-supportive community of people. But anyway, the manipulation of the target/audience that orqan was talking about is surely a pervasive and deleterious process. No one likes the hype machine boosting some sounds that are photocopies of photocopies.
Can you outline your creative process?
Venta Protesix: There has never been any creative process since 2008.
orqan2: We put some instruments together (guitars, synth, drum machines, pedals, mixers, ecc), turn them on and make some noise! Ending the session unplug the fastest you can and possibly forget how you did what you did. Is challenging and funny.
Lately, we started doing some post production editing and mixing, but it’s not a must.
E.M. Spazz Unit: Usually I go for a pedal chain, digital or virtual; then I will play that “set” on a body of drums. The vocals and the whole EQ are the last stage.
Who inspires your style and aesthetics?
orqan2: Personally speaking, on the noise side I mainly like the japanoise scene (CCCC, Incapacitants, Merzbow, ecc), but almost everything which is distorted catches my attention; on the other music side it depends on what I’m listening to in specific periods. In this period (started quite far) I’m down with bunker records stuff and Giant Swan.
I’m not really into the aesthetic part, so I prefer not to let my point of view prevail.
orqan1: We actually never actively thought about an aesthetics for orqan, but since our friend Michele is doing 80% of our artworks, he helped a lot in shaping it.
Music-wise I’m really inspired by black metal, hardcore and a particular style of deconstructed electronics. I always search for a violent and nervous approach to my music.
E.M. Spazz Unit: I really don’t know. I think E.M. is a blend of every powerviolence / harsh noise I heard in the years melted with the sci-fi literature I’ve been reading for some time. And besides that, probably I’ve never recovered from hours of Agoraphobic Nosebleed when I was younger. Probably I am not the only one.
What is the achievement or moment in your career you are the most proud of and why?
orqan2: Very much right now and all the amazing projects we are working on.
orqan1: There are a lot of beautiful moments that I cherish in my career, like playing huge festivals or small SEA islands that nobody ever heard of, but with this project i think two of the best achievements were: the first show ever, were we made all the “crowd” run away and we ended the set with zero people in front, and our show in Milan where 2 people ask us to release a record with their labels right after our set.
E.M. Spazz Unit: Probably my first album “To Sterilize Music” for Black Ring Rituals, a label from Fargo, North Dakota. It sounded relentlessly anti-human and synthetic.
What do you think an artist should sing about nowadays?
orqan1: To be honest I think people should sing whatever they want, I don’t really care about. Also my opinion is pretty much irrelevant: I don’t want to tell people what to sing, I’m here to listen to what they have to say.
E.M. Spazz Unit: Totally agree with orqan.
Do you have any regrets?
orqan1: I should have continued studying classical guitar instead of focusing on normal school.
orqan2: A lot of, like everyone I think. Almost every time there’s a choice to make, I think it is harder to don’t think about the ways it could be and simply going on and being fully happy with the one you made.
E.M. Spazz Unit: Plenty.
Venta Protesix: Just having created the Venta Protesix project.
Maybe.
What is some piece of advice you would give to yourself right now?
orqan2: Spend well the rest of the salary cap left in your fantasy baseball league.
orqan1: Drop everything and go live in Indonesia.
E.M. Spazz Unit: Detach from Flesh.
