Regel

Launching into the early, wintering months of the new year, the brand new imprint Oblio – the latest adventure in the Die Schachtel / Blume family – delivers their debut LP, the first ever fully remastered vinyl reissue of Maurizio Bianchi’s seminal 1982 album “Regel”. A startling bridge between 1950s and ’60s avant-garde electronic music and the legacies of punk, originally released on Bianchi’s own Mectpyo Sounds imprint under the moniker M.B., for decades it has been hotly pursued as one of the great cornerstones of early ’80s Italian experimentalism and Industrial music. Fully remastered by Andrea Marutti and issued in collaboration with the artist in a very limited edition of 280 copies on black vinyl, the album is housed in a sleeve that fully replicates the original, and contains two inserts and a sticker. It is a rare chance to immerse yourself in one of the remarkable artefacts of its era and Bianchi’s singular sound world
Comprising two, untitled, side-long compositions, M.B.’s “Regel” stands among the best illuminations of the tangible links between the early electronic avant-garde and certain forms of music that blossomed from the cultural revolution of punk. The first piece draws upon manipulated sound sources, threaded with synthesizer or theremin, which collectively gather an almost post-apocalyptic sensibility. Using a similar sound palette, the album’s second side delves toward a more markedly tonal realm, utilising deconstructed melodic elements, striking harmonic collisions and pulses, placed within a cavernous sense of space and texture that achieves thrilling seductiveness
Remarkably cohesive over the entirety of its length – resembling an expansive and evolving sonorous journey through the darkened depths of visionary creative mind – “Regel” is made up of two sprawling, long-form sides standing in stark contrast to M.B.’s more aggressive, industrial-oriented works. Instead, what unfolds is a classic of austere musical hypnotism, helping add to the spiritual nature of the album as it ebbs and flows, culminating as an unprecedented form of meditation music, pitch perfect for the moment it emerged. An unquestionable high-water mark in early ’80s Italian experimentalism, as well as within the broader movements of Industrial music and noise, Maurizio Bianchi’s seminal LP “Regel” remains as fresh, engrossing, and exciting as the day it first appeared in 1982