Abul Mogard / Maurizio Bianchi Nervous Hydra / All This Has Passed Forever

Always a pleasure to hear new work from them legendary Italian artist Maurizio Bianchi - his side of this split LP on Ecstatic is great. ‘Nervous Hydra’ is something like spending seventeen minutes submerged in water or regressing to a foetus floating in amniotic fluid. At one moment I imagine I’m a droplet of water on its journey through it’s life cycle - the next I see pink tissue dissolving in royal blue liquid. It’s brilliantly weird - at once calming and transcendent yet equally disorientating.

Abul Mogard’s side ‘All This Has Passed Forever’ is a right old weeper - a proper melancholy tearjerker. Come on man… hold… it... together… must... not... start... blubbing...must… type… words into... computer… (wipes tears and snot from keyboard). Here Mogard combines Farfisa organ and Serge modular recorded at EMS studios with field recordings for a slab of bittersweet romantic ambient. There’s an almost devotional/ church-like feel to the organ - like some kind of sacred holy music but with a far more personal, intimate, introspective slant. It’s undeniably beautiful, with a kinda depressing sense of nostalgia that’s almost overwhelming. Drop this and you’d better have a pack of Kleenex at the ready - there won’t leave a dry eye in the house.