infrantumi by STARFUCKERS

MILKBONE n° 28 Aug/Sep 1998 by Gil Gershman
Is "Rock Concrete" a redundant term or an oxymoron? Italy's Starfuckers convincingly demonstrate that it need not be either. This Heat is the obvious (and most likely deliberate) point of reference for the extremely brittle _Infrantumi_ ("In Pieces"). Starfuckers' concrhte often has a gummy,not yet fully-set consistency and the unappetizing look of cold oatmeal. It's very gray and severe, riddled with trapped air bubbles, but it's actually rather remarkable when you examine it closely. "Di Marmo" is musical cement in its most liquid state, a cooling conglomerate whose constituents haven't quite settled. All of _Infrantumi_'s elements are visible and distinguishable here - gaseous bass, hesitant percussion, guitar spiderwebbing, mumbled vocals in a narcoleptic Faust style, and minute found-sound pebbles - peeking through the atmospheric muck. Tracks which have hardened completely ("Un Segno Esterno," "Colfi Con Cui," "Di Me")still show glints of their components, like the flecks of muscovite and glass-shard diamonds secreted within the macadam, but only when the light hits from just the right angle. Like pavement, _Infratumi_ reveals far more than the sameness which meets the eye from afar - but you must be willing to bend down for a closer look. - GG [Milkbone 28 - Aug/Sep '98]

CMJ-New Music Report 1998 by Mike Wolf
infrantumi (Italian for "in pieces") is the third full-length album in Starfuckers' 11-year history. The title is most appropriate, since Starfuckers do more than just fracture rock songs into their components - they completely separate drumbeats, guitar sounds and various scrapings and clangs from what may have originally been a fairly normal piece. It all gets spliced back together again into a completely new beast, one which makes Frankenstein's monster look commonplace. Over the mostly quiet and minimal (though alien and pleasantly unsettling) arrangements, the Italian trio whispers in its native tongue. and we're left to guess at the meaning. Endlessly fascinating and challenging, this release, while probably not for everyone, offers one inventive group's look at what rock is - nothing more or less than the sum of its parts. Any of the dozen tracks within are sure to either dazzle or befuddle.

ALTERNATIVE PRESS (USA) 1998 by Bill Cohen
Ultraminimal and exceedingly strange deconstruction of rock.
It makes me tired heart proud to sing Starfuckers' praises because they create sounds that are so far removed from what 99 percent of the world considers to be music. infrantumi stumbles and lurches like a wounded bull weaving and bobbing its way toward the matador. Starfuckers sound as it they took their own favorite parts of -his - loat and dissected and mutilated them until there were millions of urelated notes remaining, and attempted to piece them back together in the form of a rock album. Nothing connects or makes much sense here, but the masochist in me finds myself addicted to Starfuckers' barrage of disjointed sounds and grumbled vocals. infrantumi offers yet more proof that are kicks to -- had by those who will poke holes in rock's bloated corpse.

MAGNET (USA) 1998 by Gina Bittner
Starfuckers intend to screw with your idea of music. infrantumi displays disjointed plinking, soft fly-like buzzing, low rumbling and seemingly random guitar picking. The point of this, the italian band claims, is to force the listeners to riform their opinion about "music" -a re-evautation that will come about, the band believes, upon listening to such detached musical tones (i.e. what's on this album). Still, it's unlikely that you could even get anyone not accustomed to this sort of thing to listen to the clap-trap on infrantumi long enough to form any new opinion (other than that it's tedious). At one point, there some weak cymbal and snare-drum tapping; at another, there some brief, jazz-guitar-type strumming (wich does reveal the band members can actually play their instruments if they want to). Starfuckers are vaguely akin to Oval or Main, whose music isn't quite so anarchical, minimalistic and scattered. Starfuckers, however, sound like what you'd hear at midnight in a solar house. Sure, they're pushing the boundaires of acceptable recordings, but it's doubtful many listeners would be willing to make the huge investment (emotion, patience, time) to go with this group for the ride.

STRIDER NEWS (USA) 1998 by GC
The first 'available' CD release by this Italian 'experimental rock' band who evidently take that 'experimental' thing seriously. My only prior exposure to them was na OK piece on a Bananafish comp. which came off as a less bone-headed track from a Laibach Beatles-tribute joke album, so i was a bit apprehensive about the need for a full lenght. Much to my welcome surprise, the *fuckers manage to pull off an unlikely quasi-literal work of 'roque-concrete' as advertised. infrantumi sounds kinda like a Pierre Henry tape manipulation piece realized from recordings of the much-rumored reperformance of the soundtrack to Suspiria by This Heat. The duration of the album consists of fragments of guitar, drum, voice, and electronics which seem to be held together only by static electicity, the kind of thing that's likely to make a number of 'open-minded' people say "what the fuck is that?" In a perfect world this would have been released on ReR (hey, it fits all the qualifications for RIO except that it doesn't sound like it was recorded in 1982). Blessed be the drunken Fisherman for making this world slightly imperfect.
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Starfuckers, is an experimental music unit based in Italy. Starting from a raw, minimal and high power approach to the rock language, it soon developed a personal direction exploring the unexplored space between proto-punk, black roots and contemporary music.

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