What I find fascinating and sadistically alluring about NOT399093's Malta Orlata is that it appears totally dismissive of its audience. Every piece of media has a presumed audience, someone who the author/creator/director intends to reach with their message and output. Someone the artist believes would be receptive to their dispatch. Judging from the crippled and crud-caked aesthetics of Malta Orlata, the Italian dance mix doesn't just appear to be directed at no one in particular, but no living person period- least of all someone looking to enjoy a night of dancing. Italian producers are all beneficiaries of a long tradition of making the abstract and idiosyncratic accessible to the masses, but what happens when one of them attempts to make the popular as alienating as possible? I think you'd get something like Malta Orlata. Here the rhythmic synchronizations that have become the circulatory and respiratory apparatus of UK clubs and high-end party spaced across the globe end up being flipped irreconcilably, tumbling like a terrarium full of tarantulas off a petshop shelf during an earthquake, spilling their contents into the hair, eyes, and nostrils of zombified revelers who have dispatched their senses and courted oblivion through the intoxicaton of unremitting motion and stupifying glare. The album's bleeding excoriations, flustered coughs, anguished curling brittles, foggy mangled retrievals, venomous enhancements, and half-cannibalized skeletal architecture offer a spectrum of sound with exaggerated radioactivity, capable of rearranging DNA without concern for the functionality or survival of the victimized organism. It mutilates the core sequencing of dance culture's motifs in a manner that entices orgastic fulfillment but never arrives at a climax, preserving such pleasures for itself. I could see a NOT399093 gig playing out like this: clubbers arrive at the venue ready for a good time, only to realize that all of the exits and bathrooms have been sealed. There is no DJ but the sound system switches on automatically and begins playing a percolating jungle beat which gets the room in motion despite the obvious danger raised by the attendee's inability to leave. After about half an hour, the stage opens below the mixer, speakers and subwoofers and they are plunged into a vat of acid like a wad of sugary dough into a deep fryer at a country fair- desperately sputtering out one final bassline before succumbing to corrosion. This kills the vibe permanently and people begin to panic. In the ensuing chaos, someone behind the bar discovers an envelope containing an assemblage of clues and ciphers and convinces everyone to temper their anxieties long enough to figure out what these codes could mean. Decoding the riddles leads the guests to discover a means of egress; unfortunately, it is a sewage line that runs under the dancefloor. In lifting up the checker pattern tiles in the center of the room they uncover a stinking portal to safety. After some hesitation, they enter one by one to crawl through the muck and refuse until they immerge on the other side, into a wheat field on the outskirts of town. NOT399093 has been in this field the whole time, his equipment hooked up to an old gas-powered generator, and playing to the mice, snakes, and other vermin that inhabit this agricultural refuge. By the time the revelers have begun extracting themselves from the waste line they used to escape the club, dawn has broke across the horizon, and NOT has taken to enjoying a cigarette in the early morning light, watching these wretched souls breathe their first breath of fresh air that evening as they wring filth out of their hair and clothes and scramble to reclaim their dignity. They've earned their freedom but no other reward. The show is long over. Time to go home.
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