Lago Morto

It seems that the new trend for the summer season 2009 in Italy is setting up all-star bands. Lago Morto though is more than just a band. Or less, if you consider it lasted for about 20 days only.

Lago Morto is an (artistic) project, born and dead in Vittorio Veneto, a small town of almost 30.000 inhabitants nearby Treviso, and conceived by Nico Vascellari, With Love's singer, whom I already mentioned in the previous post. A project carried out by members of With Love, A Flower Kollapsed and Lucertolas, all living in the north-east area of the mediterranean peninsula.

It is not clear if Lago Morto was a short-lived punk band or a noisy artistic experiment, but it has certainly spread rumors all over the web between the so-called hc scene and the unaware witnesses bumped into the shows.

Fifteen gigs in a row, a whole "tour" based exclusively in Vittorio Veneto, and above all the choice to play in unusual venues and odd locations such as pizza shops, restaurants, laundrettes, video megastores, old inns, etc. After that Lago Morto was actually over .

Think about your granma going to do the washing at the local laundrette and running into those crazy guys making an unbearable noise and stage-diving over the washing machines... This is enough to point out the weirdness and the brilliance of this project.

Exceptionally the very last Lago Morto's performance took place in a art exhibition in Graz, Austria.

With Love

Formed in 1995, With Love had been the first band in Italy to embody the prototype of the screamo band back in the mid 90's. In the beginning in fact, they used to play a caothic and screamed 90's emocore a la Ebullition. Known for their intense and passionate live sets, usually degerating into chaos with members of the band screaming and rolling on the stage, it goes without saying that they soon turned into the scapegoat in the vicious fight between the emos and the tough guys.

Gossips aside, their first full lenght came out on Greenrecords only in 1998, after a few 7"s or some - literally diy - releases such as the remarkable split tape with Concrete, recorded during a house show.

What made With Love essential though, was their constant evolution, the will to explore new sounds that drove the band in the space of a decade (they split up in 2006) beyond the border of punk music.

Another peculiarity of this band, is the massive influence they got from their own singer Nico Vascellari, a conceptual artist who often employed the band in his own performances and vice-versa: it is no accident therefore, that their musical experience ended up with "A great circle" a cd/dvd out on Gsl Records, not just a simple music record but the reprocessing on video of three past perfomances set to music by his bandmates.

Think whatever you want, if there had been a best live act prize, With Love would have certainly been the winners.

The first two With Love's albums (personally my favourite ones) follow.

Band: With Love

Title: s/t

Label: Green Records

Year: 1998

Genre: punk- emocore- screamo (?)

Geographical Location: Vittorio Veneto, Treviso - Veneto

1. Ciò che ho

2. Canzone veloce n°

3. Campane

4. Un solo concetto

5. Sparta

6. Brevi considerazioni sulla possibilità di comunicare

7. Prospettive per il futuro

8. Sbarre

With Love - s/t

Band: With Love

Title: I Love Cul-De-Sac

Lable: Green Records

Year: 2000

Genre: punk, screamo, whatever

Geographical Location: Vittorio Veneto, Treviso - Veneto

1. Blood is blood even if it looks like a smile

2. Swallowing indigestible food

3. Past is worse than a mutilated hand

4. M is for M is dead

5. I'll breath in the water

6. Welcome

7. Tongue Illustrations

8. Kiss me goodbye

9. Eat him! Drink him!

With Love - I Love Cul-De-Sac.rar

Related bands: Bluid, Enacoid, Stellina, Spunky Boyz, Lago Morto, Smart Cops, Ninos Du Brasil.

Burning Defeat - Seldom

Band: Burning Defeat

Title: Seldom

Label: Green Records

Year: 1996

Genre: Post-hardcore, emocore

Geographical Location: Alessandria - Piemonte

Related bands: One Fine Day, Handrail, Mudhead, Deep End, Green Like July, Permanent Scar, Carver.

1. agoraphobia

2. I-F 1889

3. Ravel

4. Holy diver

5. Chocked truth

6. Nightflight

7. "...I've partaken to nothing"

8. From rail to rail

9. Open gate

10. Frantic

11. Lullaby (lock-keeper)

Singlin' out the aims 7"

12. Pain addiction

13. No prospective

14. Rainy day

This is where it all began.

31st December 1996. The day when my stereo played Seldom for the first time. Until that day I had no clue who Burning Defeat were and I had never heard of a kind of music, or whatever it was, called Emocore before. What I am thoroughly sure of though, is that from that very moment Burning Defeat and their sound truly captured me and I couldn't help but listen to Seldom twice a day for at least 3 months in a row.
Burning Defeat were a band from Alessandria, a town in the north-west side of Italy, active in the mid 90's.
Seldom, which also includes their previous 7" "Singlin' Out The Aims" is their (sole) full length released in 1996 by Green Records, one of the best diy record labels active in Italy over the 90's (besides being a record shop and a mailorder).

Labelled by magazines and fanzines of that time as one of the best italian post-hc records (surely one of my favourite album of all time), the product of those 14 tracks was said to remind bands such as Quicksand or Jane's Addiction.

It was in 1997 or 1998 that, when they were just about to be appreciated outside of Italy, they decided to split up.

Burning Defeat, Seldom.rar