Masche - Oxia Chaos CD released 2022 label Alma De Nieto catalog number DNN 031 C

Masche is an Italian collective that offers a genre of Experimental and Jazz music with references to Electronic music. Long-lasting tracks and complex plots are the main ingredients of their sound, full of ideas and creative insights. The new album “Oxia Chaos” was released on February 4, 2022 via ADN Records / Cruel Nature Records and contains 4 long-running tracks. The lineup of this new album consists of 4 elements creating complex and articulated sounds with long intricate instrumental sections. Each of the artists involved brings their own creative and executive contribution to the band sound, offering technical insights and high-level virtuosity. the album is complicated and at first listening it can be difficult, but after a more careful listening it reveals all its beauty and the technique of the artists involved comes out. We are in a territory that ranges from Free Jazz to Experimentation, passing through all genres of Prog and Improvisation. Even the electronic inserts give a modern touch to the sound, which is true is complicated and intricate but of fine workmanship. The vocals are also dynamic and adapt well to the proposed music, offering original experiments. A listening recommended for lovers of the more complex sounds of jazz and improvisation, with a good dose of experimental and avant-garde music. The proposed sound is original and fresh and enhances the individual technique of the artists involved.

Jacopo Vigezzi (ProgRock Journal) 23/02/2022

Released in the year 1950 and written by respected US Sci-fi novelist Ray Bradbury The Martian Chronicles, is seen as a classic example of post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction. Oxia Chaos is this sonic collective's attempt to soundtrack said book, and it’s their second album

Hailing from Ivrea, Italy, Masche started in 2013 in Canavese, as an open collective focusing on merging rock, electronics and improvisation. Eventually, a steady line-up was settled, currently consisting of four musicians: Valerio Zucca Paul: electronics, Andrea Chiuni: bass and voice, Diego Rosso: drums, Alessandro Cartolari: baritone sax.

In The Martian Chronicles, we find strife and destruction due to the exploration and settlement of Mars, the home of indigenous Martians, by Americans leaving Earth that has been devastated by nuclear war. And this can be felt within the music! First of all, the sound “transliteration” of the book via Oxia Chaos seems as if it was recorded in a leftover cinematic set, combining that theatrical essence with a free jazz improv sensibility. The aesthetic of the production is organic and crystal clear, with a generally earthly sound. A mixture of instrument dynamics with electronic saturation, either in the continuance or contradiction manner; creating both topology and topography within the sound.

This is free form jazz, and it is definitely freaky. It’s a blend of loud and serene, capturing the book’s troubled outrush. Oxia Chaos progressively moves via the chains of reactions between the musicians. Sound phrases instantly create images, freely. Dramatic reciting of passages from the book, with an agonizing and emerging voice, accompanied by manic jazzy outbursts or low-profile soundscapes, where the sax is cataclysmic, the bass is crunchy, drums are pumping, and the electronics are shadowlike, sometimes scorching, like drops of water straight from hell. The whole soundscape is claustrophobic yet vast in conception, this is an album with various speeds, various sentiments, various sound ecologies, various moods, bright and dark contemporary and vintage.

With Oxia Chaos, Masche approach scoring The Martian Chronicle with the utmost respect to its atmosphere giving a great audio counterpart, which generates further stories. But also, Oxia Chaos stands as a heavy and heavily improvised jazz creation with rock elements, complete, with both volume and atmosphere - making it a fully psychedelic experience in every possible way. 

4/5

Karl Grümpe (Music Machine)