Horizon of DarknessWatch out for your own body. It is sick of being a slave to the head, to that overstuffed globule called The Mind. Why shouldn’t it sing in jerks and spasms? For too long it has obeyed alien considerations, common and sixth senses, the violent suppression of animate life demanded by that supreme terrorist who squats in the skull. At least this seems to be the point of Matt Bean Rizzo’s Horizon of Darkness music. In the outrageous rejection of what supposedly makes us distinct from the other animals, he charts a path barely hinted at by other artists. Or if they do envy chaos, most contemporary musicians can only make the point with grating self-consciousness. Either way, that old fraud Intention sneaks in under the manicured screams and howls. Talk of Intention is an old legal device to let the worst offenders off the hook. Mr. Bean Rizzo’s great wisdom is to know that everyone is equally guilty.
He does employ some very excellent musicians (Mark Greenberg, Spencer Tweedy, Rick Rizzo) on his latest album, Lightning Vs Sunshine, but they are there simply to embellish the severe outlines or to occasionally add radiator hiss. They obey orders, knowing little of what’s really at stake. Sometimes they are almost reprimanded by Mr Bean Rizzo, which adds great tension and mystery to the performances. The evidence is overwhelming. Neither accident nor conspiracy, the Horizon of Darkness sounds like the apparition of a wrestler in the last electric light bulb.
Hali Palombo
Hali Palombo is an avid practitioner of “plunderphonics”: sampling existing musical/aural works and intertwining them into something brand new, whether it’s shortwave radio and CB radio samples, wax cylinder audio, and field recordings taken from Midwestern points of interest. Through her music and art, she aims to make the perceived ordinary hypnotic, haunting and memorable.
Michael Zerang’s Velvet Bell
Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is a first-generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms.
As a percussionist, composer and collaborator, Zerang has over one hundred and thirty-five titles in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally to 39 countries since 1981, and works with and ever-widening pool of multi-disciplinary collaborators.
