Although active since before the inception of Haunter Records, Sense Fracture’ release schedule has been somewhat sparse and infrequent. Throughout the years, the soul behind the project — label co-head Francesco Birsa Alessandri— focused more on keeping the Milan underground scene alive by working extensively as a promoter and a DJ.
Their debut LP Landscape Of Thorns sets to repair this imbalance, with its 11 tracks showing the scope of Alessandri’s research into chaos, intensity and meta-fictional abstraction. Dissecting various genres of music known for their spiritual and sonic ferociousness, the Sense Fracture method is to then rebuild them with the tools of hi-tech sound design and harsh noise, birthing cheeky monsters and uncanny animals.
A kind of loose concept album, Landscape Of Thorns was inspired by many real-world tragedies and their political and human ramifications, aiming to comment and react by producing a disjointed yet hyperrealist narrative dealing with borders and the violence of division, the fear of the unknown and the possibility of survival through mutation. An uneven undercurrent of mediterranean music –specifically south-Italian folk dances- traverses and germinates through every track, rendering itself more or less evident in various amounts. This was spawned by Alessandri’s need to incorporate more of their cultural heritage in their music, using Italy’s problematic history of internal and external relations as the main catalyst for all of the album’s preoccupations.
Rhythmic structures ranging from traditional saltarello, pizzica and tarantella to postmodern compounds like lento violento are thus contaminated and transformed into digitized grindcore exorcisms, de-humanized soundscapes and maximalist rave barrages. Unsurprisingly, the lineup of collaborators that pop throughout the album is composed of artists who share Sense Fracture’s taste for boundary-pushing: from the mighty Kenyan digi-core commando DUMA, to noise-poetry hellion Elvin Brandhi, Italian avant-metal and performance art legend ?Alos and post-hardcore destroyer Lizzitsky.
Landscape Of Thorns is, at its core, a tale of the ultimate border, of all efforts made to surpass it, destroy it and subvert it. Of the struggle to repurpose its divisive violence into connective tissue. A surreal melodrama revealing itself as a political magic operation.
credits
released November 17, 2023
Written and produced by Francesco Birsa Alessandri
Except: track 2 written by Francesco Birsa Alessandri and Stefania Pedretti; track 4 written by Francesco Birsa Alessandri and Freya Edmondes; track 6 written by Francesco Birsa Alessandri, Martin Kanja and Sam Karugu; track 9 written by Francesco Birsa Alessandri and Daniel Canetti
Mixed and mastered by Jesse Osborne-Lanthier
Percussions recorded by Rocco Rampino
Artwork by Rustan Soderling, additional visual treatments by Nicola Tirabasso
supported by 8 fans who also own “Landscape Of Thorns”
Super exciting experimental and deconstructed tunes on this release. This release balances really nice between the a more etheral/astral sound and some gnarly noise elements. Everything I love about deconstructed club in one go. Markus (Hårek)
Murky and mysterious sounds from Jonquera, depicting, “a feudal struggle between a heretic woman & a priest in the small town of Charlieu.” Bandcamp New & Notable Dec 13, 2020
This young Berlin-via-Paris producer makes inventive breakcore on the more industrial end, infectious even at its most abstract. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 19, 2019
Vitu Valera gives Afro-Preuvian sounds a fresh and innovative update with influences from dembow, baile funk, and more. Bandcamp New & Notable Dec 7, 2023
