Phi by Mai Mai Mai

Roman noise omnivore Toni Cutrone aka Mai Mai Mai names his poisonous electronic miasmas after characters of the Greek alphabet: Theta in 2013; Δέλτα (Delta) in 2014. Φ (Phi) is the third and final installment in his Mediterranean trilogy, pushing deeper into digital synthesis and scorched ritual.

The album opens with a duel of distorted drones (a collaboration with avant-folk instrumentalist Luca Venitucca) before plunging into oblivion bass, seething feedback, and combat samples. Later passages ooze industrial spoken word, technoid voodoo, seasick prayer loops, and nightmare exotica, assisted in places by Italian experimental percussion legend Lino Capra Vaccina (of 1970’s “golden age” groups Aktuala and Telaio Magnetico). Cutrone ascribes his maximalist tendencies to a rootless youth packed with parents through Europe and the Near East, absorbing fragments of sensation and sound, but his own decade-plus experience as liaison and musician in the Italian underground has also played a role. Intensity accrues, patience decays; closure is its own reward.