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Veterans of the Italian experimental scene, Le Forbici di Manitù celebrate in their own peculiar way twenty years of underground activism through an album recorded live in their cellar, offering new arrangements, essential and direct, of (nearly) all the “songs” in their back repertory, appeared from 1983 until today on a dozen of different releases (cds, compilations, rare cassettes and singles). Laying aside for this time conceptual electronics, noise-oriented audiogames and imaginary soundtracks, the atypically affable voice of Manitù Rossi guides us through an heterogeneous collection of surreal ballads of desperate love and disconsolate odes to the most despairing normality, grim dark songs about serial killers and nervous psycho-funk hymns inspired by old b-movies, touching elegies to deceased Pop artists and sad reflections on the state of indie music. As a bonus, covers and hommages between the lines to The Associates, Nico, The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Wire and Cocteau Twins. On the second cd we find instead remakes and remixes of other songs by Le Forbici di Manitù, recorded in the studio through a network of friends and special guests. We hear the enthralling G-Pop of Valvola & Mac Donald Duck Eclair and the deviant electro-funk of Technogod and Erasermen, the bizarre avant-punk of Maisie (with the plagiarist Plozzer) and the rarefied ambient dub of Teho Teardo. And let’s not forget the tour de force of the hallucinatory title-track Tagliare (literally “to cut”), an electro-rhythmical sequence by Le Forbici di Manitù reworked by several international artists (Mana ERG, DJ Balli, Lloyd Dunn, Rod Summers, T.A.C., Massimo Giacon, Nocturnal Emissions) and then mixed in a phenomenal cut-up dj set of over 23’, performed by Marani and Taver of DuoZero.
