Not a fan of twenty-minute psych jams? You'd better get your coat then. The rest of you, stick around, because Italians Inutili manage to get themselves into a deep groove and remain there – and unlike so many others in the drone/psychedelia field, you don't get bored after five minutes, and you don't come out the other end feeling as though you've just wasted nearly three quarters of an hour of your life listening to a couple of repetitive improvisations by one band, when you could have listened to a dozen classic tunes by any other. Neither track on new LP 'Music To Watch The Clouds On A Sunny Day' seems to drag on, and both feel much shorter than they actually are. With a handful of exceptions, this is something of a rarity.
The album title is really quite appropriate, although the noisy fug that we hit around the halfway point of the equally appropriately-titled 'Fry Your Brain' could just as easily be suited to getting off your box in a darkened room to. With a bobbing, looping bassline that recalls Wooden Shjips, and jagged fragments of piercing noise that could be sampled from a live Spacemen 3 performance, 'Fry Your Brain' is deceivingly funky. You almost don't notice the feedback and the fuzz because that groove sits at the front and gets into your brain. It's going to be a challenge not to use the word “hypnotic”, so let's get that out the way. Before Pink Floyd realised they could sell millions of records by trying to be all profound, they used to whip up a similar din under the guidance of Syd Barrett. Like those early improvisations, this track manages to be simultaneously repetitive and meandering; keeping on the same path but never getting stuck in a rut, especially as it careers towards a cacophonous climax.
The second track, 'Drunk Of Colostro', has more of a live feel, and may even have been recorded that way. Just how much is pre-planned before it's committed to tape isn't clear. Again the bass is the anchor to which everything is tied, but this time the screeching guitar is a little bluesier and from the start it begins dousing the song with feedback and scree as though the instruments are on fire. As for watching those clouds on a sunny day, well, after a while it feels as though the sun is about to be blotted out by storm clouds. There's a brief respite as the noise backs down a bit, leaving some sharp lead to cut through, but before the first half of the track is done the sky begins to cave in, taking your eardrums with it. Relaxing on a sunny day might be one use for the music of Inutili, but there are plenty of others, not least inducing tinnitus. In the best possible way though.
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