presse

	Bagio II/Fristlos CD (Fidel Bastro) von Michel Chevalier Bagio is a guitar/percussion duo that has been playing since 2005. This is their second release on Fidel Bastro which, like their first, clocks in at around 20 mn and is therefore more like (for those of us who remember the vinyl days) an EP. At 4 Eur + metal box + extras, it's a steal, and these two releases, following Bagio's development snapshot-wise, remind me of the first two Big Black EPs, in a way. Like the Chicagoans, Bagio proceeds by a process of reduction of sonic means. Big Black did this in '82 when they replaced the drum kit by a roland beat-box while maintaining a front line of punk guitar. Bagio does it by elimitating the P/A, feeding the signal of the roland drum pads (1) and the guitar into whatever home stereo or radio transmitter is available. When they bring their box of cordless headphones (as they did at the Astra Stube and the Unterm Durchschnitt shop), this means that you will hear the unamplified fretting of Uwe Bastiansen and the frantic pad-bashing of Muck Giovanett creating a volume-level of, say, three cats running around a room. Put on the cordless headphones, and you'll hear a saturated, bombastic roller coaster, not unlike, if physics allowed this, the coating of a film-noir soundtrack (compete w/ attention-grabbing time-signature changes) by a thick layer of toxic 1970's spray-paint (tracks 1 and 5, especially). One wonders: in the r'n'r world where, often, means=firepower (cf. Lightning Bolt), what measure did Bagio take first: work up their aesthetic, and then resort to amputation-or the other way around? It's easy to think that medical experimentation is underway, indeed. Uwe and Muck wear some kind of medical face masks, along with goggles (there are no vocals). The aseptic digital cymbal crashes from the roland sound like a respirator machine, at times. As when you find yourself stuck on a traffic island, the implicit is grafted on the pressingly spatial (just who are these gesticulating guys dissecting rock-sonics?).
	part 2 ->		the thing pt.1