ninehertz

Here's an intriguing split between two Italian experimentalists in the extreme, released on the French label Arsenic Sounds, specialists in harsh and esoteric sounds . OvO are known to the doom scene (they're playing London's Desertfest this week), and ostensibly a noise rock duo - but that goes nowhere to describing the twists they apply and individuality they exude. Mai Mai Mai is an unknown for me, a solo artist and proponent of "industrial drone, proto-techno, and heavy sonic textures" blended with Southern Italian folklore.

OvO provide four tracks, the first an industrial dominated intro. The first song proper, Scavo is unnatural and creepy from the go, living up to their avant-doom tag, mixing deep dark tone with wired n weird electronics, squawked vocals adding to the crazy. Yet for all that it is strangely affecting - nothing sounds like this, for one, but there's something in here that you connect to which is surprising and perhaps a little concerning. It threatens to descend close to a mess of noise at one point, but pulls out in time, goes quiet only to emphasise the heaviness when it returns. This is music that is alive and crawling, despite its mechanicalist corners, music that'll have you on edge.

Orizzonti Infiniti has yet another unsettling and odd build up, becoming manic purely through the vocals. The atmosphere positively drips. I'm not even sure of musical comparisons - this is more a feeling, a sensation of being lost in the woods in a fantasy horror. In Hollywood is glitch-repeating sample laden eerie noise.

Mai Mai Mai live up to their billing. Only two tracks, the first of which is essentially a filter driven distorted off-tone hum, backed by odd dark electronics. The second feels like a minimalist collage of samples set to thriller film threatening mood enhancing audio. It is drone, it is minimal, but it is anything other than ambient, haunted by an unseen menace.

Take Scavo out of this, and you're left with a collection of truly unhinged noise, experimentalism pushed outwards. And even that track, as marvellous as it is, is crackers. That may mean this isn't the most comfortable or satisfying listen to all but noise aficionados, but there's a case to be made to wade in regardless, feel how music can create disconcerting sensations in its listening experience.