Julie's Haircut - Our Secret Ceremony A Silent Place
The Italian music panorama seems to be static at a first glance but it's not so. It is always moving and roducing new ideas, new spurs. It is continuously swinging between fortune and misfortune but new music record labels have the force to come to life with the only tringger of love and passion for music. There' s a music movement that even though takes its inspiration from DeAndre, Gaber and other famous Italian music writers and singers does not identify itself in them and looks suspiciously and with scorn to the new idols of the TV talent shows. It is a music movement that does not want to be notorious at all costs and that thinks that lately it' s just too easy to be considered famous. My own town, for quite a long period , has been an island of creativity and originality thanks to the influence of a small pubblishing house - SMALL VOICES - that is also the owner of a record label - SILENT PLACE - owned by two people that are in love with music and have risked and lost a lot just to follow their dreams. And I say nothing new when I say that this field has no State aids and if you want to "work" with music you are in real peril especially if you follow a certain segment that is no so popular and commercial. Well, Small Voices, has not a different story and has stopped producing music a couple of years ago due to the hard rules of the Italian music market and to the suffocating Italian red tape. The record label at the moment is not publishing records . In its short life , only five but very intense years, it has produced many beautiful records and has released very interesting things from Post industrial music to Drone music to Post modern music and Sperimental pop, rock and Post punk ... Post anything but most of all Independent since it did not submit to market rules. It has left to us beautiful vinyl versions and limited editions; limited not for choice but for the need of cost control and always keeping in mind that in the case of a lucky exploit of sales they could publish many more in a short time. The first release usually had a count of 200 pieces except when they ordered more to the Austrian plant. There are also precious limited editions that include postcards, pictures and sometimes autographed material. The picture disc version of the 7" vinyl is really gorgeous, you must play it at 33 rpm. Very beautiful is also the serie of colored vinyls. All the outputs of this small production house have a high value for collectors also due to the limited number of copies produced. But this is not what we want to deal with here. Let' s talk about Julie' s Haircut' s record that is one of those records that can be easily found due to the higher number of copies released. It's a double LP "Our Secret Ceremony" released in 300 copies of which I own the 169/300. The first part is " Sermons" and the second part " Liturgy". A brief overview on the band's biography is necessary to talk about this record. Julie's Haircut is a band from Emilia Romagna, Sassuolo to be precise, and they started off as a boy band of school mates in the mid 90's. This album was released in 2009 and is the band's maturest production. In their music we can notice the influence of some American garage bands, we can spot the influence of the Dinosaur Jr and the Led Zeppelin. The band finds its identity in this album that has a fil rouge in its tracks. The songs recall the classics of rock and also psychedelic music, they use the moog and the sound is clean without the need of overdubs. Sometimes their music is psychedelic, lysergic, obsessive and recalls in some songs - The Devil in Kate Moss, Part II: The Exorcism" for example - The Doors. The same source of inspiration can be found also in another song "Breakfast with the Lobster" that is ripetitive and obsessive. In the first CD each track has its precise identity, there are influences of Krautrock, Devo and other contemporary artists. In The Devil in Kate Moss: Part I there are Sonic Youth, in The Shadow our Home there is Lou Reed, in The Stain there is some rally Brit Pop and the Killing Joke while in The Origin there are the King Crimson. May be if the artists should read this they might think I'm foolish but this is what I spot, this is what I hear. This double album is really interesting and full of good music. The band' s music culture their tastes and their cultural background are mirrored in this work. This album is really interesting, it' s also well recorded, the sound is never too compressed and the soundstage is clear. The vinyl copy is well recorded, I assume the master is a digital copy. The best track in my opinion is Mountain Tea Traders, but these songs are all enjoyable for real rock-music lovers.
