Review: Squadra Omega - Nervosa

Following hot on the heels of their rather wonderful 'Materia Oscura' LP on Donato Epiro's 'Grandangolo' imprint on Soave Records (read the review here), Squadra Omega have a new one fresh from the presses on Italy's Holidays Records and what a sublime album it is too! 'Nervosa' is a totally improvised session, recorded live by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studios and sees the band reduced to a trio: OmegaFrank - drums, OmegaG8 - bass, electronics and OmegaMatt - guitar, organ, sax and electronics. It's gotta be said that it must rate as one of the band's more challenging releases but please don't let that put you off - there is real beauty within the improvised and experimental music.

The album is just the two tracks but within each track there is variety and the crossing of many musical borders. 'Nervosa Part I' opens with some atonal jazzy guitar playing over some bubbling electronica and later joined by some equally jazzy drums. The overall effect is one of a jazz combo tuning up whilst someone sits in a corner smoking a hookah...it is trippy in that the atonal nature fucks with your senses and your preconceptions of what is music. The jazzy overtones are gradually replaced by genuinely unnerving drones and dissonant blasts of brass that again give way to more drones and electroacoustic waves of sound that flit in and out of the listeners consciousness. This is musique concrete for the 21st century and typies the acousmatic approach of many of the early pioneers - the sounds are divorced from the source leaving the listener unaware of how it came about...the whole subsumes the parts leaving a tract of music that is beguiling and mesmeric in its abstraction. However, before the track comes to an end it transmogrifies once more, this time into a jazzy, psychedelic workout that, by the rest of the album's standards, sounds remarkably 'normal' - but the exemplary guitar work soon breaks down into a discordant cacophony. 'Nervosa Part II' opens with a melange of abstract electronics and seemingly random drums that soon melt into rich guitar tones that punctuate the silence, the atmosphere shifting from one of anxiety to one of bliss. The guitar is pretty damned awesome..its simple beauty bearing similarities to Loren Connors in its 'less is more' approach to musical beauty. Dark and menacing drones are introduced that again results in change of vibes; the bliss is slowly replaced by a haunting feeling of dread. A more frantically psychedelic guitar imposes itself over the drones and the jazzy drums before disappearing into the ether. The remaining drums, drones and oscillating electronica combo gently weaves its spell and herald the return of the rich, atonal jazz guitar that has run like a motif throughout the album. In the distance exotic eastern melodies can be heard to add yet another dimension to an album that seems unbounded by time and space.

I know it's no secret that I love the left field music coming out of Italy at the moment, but when you hear an album like this , is it any wonder? As I mentioned at the start, this is probably Squadra Omega's most challenging work yet.....there is a lot of atonality and dissonance that may unsettle a lot of people but there is also an undeniable flow to proceedings and an awful lot of beauty held within. For anyone that likes their music with an experimental and challenging edge 'Nervosa' is the motherlode. It is out now on Holidays Records and can be ordered via the label's webstore here. It can streamed and purchased as download via the band's Bandcamp page here.