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VVAA - 'For The Birds: The Birdsong Project' Vol. I-V
2022 - Digital / 20xLP BOX (Search Party / Downtown Records)

*benefit comp for the National Audubon Society*

My Cat Is An Alien "Chant For The Swinging Swallows" is the previously unreleased track included in 'For The Birds, Volume V' compilation. It's part of the NYC benefit BIDSONG PROJECT, so all Digital + monster 20LP Box will support directly US National Audubon Society , which protects birds all over the Planet.

FOR THE BIRDS: THE BIRDSONG PROJECT is a massive, sweeping projec
set up by movies/TV music supervisor Randall Poster.
Featuring an astounding 242 tracks, this first-of-its-kind collection of music, poems and artwork celebrates our feathered friends in the sky, exploring the naturalistic sounds of birdcall from a multitude of artistic vistas.

Among those participating are musicians the likes of Yoko Ono, Philip Glass, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, John Cale, Beck, Daniel Lanois, Terry Riley, Thurston Moore, The Flaming Lips, Calexico, Van Dyke Parks, Alice Coltrane, Lee Ranaldo, Jim Jarmush/Squrl, Evan Parker, Bill Frisell, Animal Collective, Damon Albarn, Laurie Anderson, Elvis Costello,
plus poems read by actors as Sean Penn, Tilda Swinton, Matthew McConaughey, Michelle Williams, Olivia Wilde, Daryl Hannah, Michael Keaton, Adrien Brody, Liam Neeson among MANY MANY MORE.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Music For Phantoms (IV)'
2022 - Digital / Art Edition Lathe Cut LP (Elliptical Noise / Opax)
OPX 048

The global madness which is ravaging this "new" world seems to call out loud the need for the strong poetics behind My Cat Is An Alien’s peculiar project called MUSIC FOR PHANTOMS, whose last release dates back to 12 years ago as a triple box set published by Elliptical Noise Records.

MUSIC FOR PHANTOMS (IV) has been recorded in the middle of the night at MCIAA’s HQ in the Western Alps with only 2 glockenspiels, wordless vocals and a single condenser microphone to capture the essence of the screaming silence. The instantaneously composed music manifests itself as a sparkling distillate of pure poetry in an ocean of iridescent silence and estranging analog morphologies.

In the deepest heart of the night, in those hours that belong to the dimension inhabited by the spirits, in the same instants sealed by a silence so clear that it becomes deafening noise, every single note of the glockenspiels whispers the words of the solitary souls that emerge from the darkness like traces of shooting stars. In this perspective, MCIAA immortalized on Polaroid Duochrome films yellow dots of their light installation dragged on the snowy mantle under the night sky.

MUSIC FOR PHANTOMS is the symbol of a urgent, poetic vision: a “light” that does not yet intend to fade away.

*** ART EDITION LATHE CUT LP ***
Private Press Edition of 19 hand-numbered copies.
Acrylic painting intervention + installed Polaroid Duochrome film + handwritings on cover by Roberto Opalio. Includes insert. Signed and hand-numbered by the artists.
Hand-cut one by one from analogue tape directly on transparent lathe cut LP.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JOELLE VINCIARELLI - ' > ETERNAL BEYOND > III '
2021 - Private Press LP / Digital (Opax / Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers!)
OPX 047 / UATWM 017

According to arcane, ancient cultures, sometimes things must come to an end to be "Eternal". My Cat Is An Alien & Joëlle Vinciarelli's > ETERNAL BEYOND > III is the 3rd and final chapter of a Trilogy born in spring 2015.
Based on a vision of radical and spontaneous free improvisation which the Opalio brothers have pushed to the extreme along their 23 years of tireless activity as MCIAA, the project with Joëlle Vinciarelli has immediately revealed as a key encounter, both artistically and personally.
> ETERNAL BEYOND > tracks’ titles often paid tribute to figures of artists, poets, musicians and outsiders such as Albert Ayler, William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Art Ensemble Of Chicago… Here the clairvoyant title concluding the Trilogy is > ETERNAL ÉTERNITÉ > , an homage to poet Arthur Rimbaud.

*** Private Press Limited Edition of 100 hand-numbered copies. ***
Marble Violet-Blue Color Vinyl LP.
Hand-pasted artwork on printed jackets. 3 art cards.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Hypnotherapy'
2021 - Cassette / Digital (Lost Treasures Of The Underworld / USA)

"My Cat Is An Alien's new full-length album "HYPNOTHERAPY" re-imagines an entirely new spectrum of light (and dark) manifested in the form of an analog cassette on NYC based Lost Treasures of the Underworld records. As suggested by the title, this masterly crafted work of 100% "hypno-alien-therapy-music", will induce you to relax your cracked soul floating in space in a sublime, trance-like state of consciousness, completely out of time and ordinary reality. - As they wander thru the vast distance of the multi-verse, MCIAA makes a rare visit to new far off world and offers us this glimpse.

Details of the exact location and the year/month/day of this recording have been omitted, just letting us know it was "recorded live in the pre-pandemic world".

"Italy’s premier duo My Cat Is An Alien are often found creating odd space noises on homemade instruments. This tape is all that. It’s a single track, split between two sides, beginning with glistening vocals held aloft by unusual string action. After a little while, the orgone accumulators rev up and everything transmutes into something like a long simmering jam at London’s Roundhouse between Dik Mik from Hawkwind and a couple of staggering members of BYG era Gong.
Just great!" - BYRON COLEY / The Wire.

*** Transparent blue cassette in full-color 6-panel J-card with artwork by Roberto Opalio and design by MCIAA. ***
Limited edition of only 100.

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THE STRANGE STRINGS ENSEMBLE - 'One for Ra'
2021 - Private Press LP / Digital (Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers! / Opax)
UATWM 014 / OPX 046

THE STRANGE STRINGS ENSEMBLE
(My Cat Is An Alien, Joëlle Vinciarelli, Philippe Robert)

ONE FOR RA is an instantaneous composition. The music is totally improvised. Total improvisation without any preconceived score or structure equals composition for us.
ONE FOR RA is dedicated to Sun Ra. In particular it’s a tribute to the album Sun-Ra and his Astro Infinity Arkestra “Strange Strings”, first released on his own Saturn label in 1967.

We all played a spontaneous composition performing ancient, mostly ethnic, acoustic string instruments from Vinciarelli’s vast collection. All instruments were completely “untuned”, thus following Sun Ra’s approach to that peculiar work—which he called “a study in ignorance”. The sounds are acoustic and no electronics are involved—except for a short, real-time looped vocal part. No use of overdubs nor outtakes.
ONE FOR RA has been performed at the end of some days of intense recording sessions for My Cat Is An Alien & Joëlle Vinciarelli’s project > ETERNAL BEYOND > . The idea came out the same day during a conversation with Philippe Robert, renowned music critic and writer as well as self-declared non-musician. Thus his involvement in the performance as fourth member of the group was even more exciting and challenging.
Listening to the final piece, the extreme cohesion of sound at times makes it difficult to be sure who was playing what. Yet that’s a further point to enter into the core of the composition. We highly suggest to the listener to forget there are four people on this recording and try to hear it as a whole. ONE FOR RA, indeed!
--Maurizio & Roberto Opalio, Saturn, Solar System, March 2021

NOTE: this record is also conceived as a sort of compendium to the book by My Cat Is An Alien & Philippe Robert
“FREE JAZZ MANIFESTO” published by Lenka lente editions in April 2021.

*** Marble Turquoise / Petrol Color Vinyl LP. Private Press limited edition Ltd.100. ***
Pasted artwork on printed cover, each with unique color markers' variations by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio.
Includes insert on fine art paper + 24" x 12" ful-color double sided "FREE JAZZ MANIFESTO" poster.
Hand-numbered 1/100 on back.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'The World that IS and IS NOT'
2020 - Private Press Color LP / Digital (Opax Private Press)
OPX 045

'The World that IS and IS NOT' is the enigmatic title of My Cat Is An Alien's new "concept album". 'The World that IS and IS NOT' is the existential reflection of MCIAA on 2020: a pandemic scenario where everything seems to vanish into the Void.
Explicitly dedicating this new studio album to the dark ages we’re all living through, more than ever MCIAA stand strong to claim that Music and Art are the primary and true “cure” for spiritual disquiet and moral despair.
Thus the music herein is highly spiritual, sensitive, soft and warm… surprisingly lyrical. Its celestial melodies cannot but induce to transcendental meditations. MCIAA offer a one-way ticket to still unexplored otherwordly territories and better realms of space-time consciousness.
An inborn wisdom that Roberto Opalio resumes in his poem handwritten on the album insert: "In the endless vortex of No-Thing / […] I still do believe / Art can save my Spiritual Noise soul".

Produced by MCIAA in multi-dimensional, fully dynamics-frequency spectrum “STEREOALIEN FIDELITY”.
Released on the renewed Opax Private Press imprint in a first, ultra-limited and hand-numbered edition of 100 Silver Color Vinyl LPs, housed in full-color printed jacket with folded cover/insert on Italian fine art linen textured 250g cardboard. Includes a 70x50 cm Poster. Cover and poster painting by Roberto Opalio. Design by MCIAA.

*** Silver Color Vinyl LP + Poster (70x50 cm). ***
Folded cover/insert on Italian fine art linen textured 250g cardboard.
Full-color printed jacket designed by MCIAA.
(1st Pressing handnumbered 1/100.)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JEAN-MARC MONTERA - 'Nuit d'Hiver'
2020 - Private Press Color LP / Digital (The End mAde RecordS / Opax)
TEARS 003 / OPX 044

It was on a winter’s night ('Nuit d'Hiver' indeed) five days before Christmas 2018, when My Cat Is An Alien and Jean-Marc Montera joined on stage to perform for the second time as a trio, proving once again their heavenly graced and powerful music-mind-soul connection. Recorded live at the final edition of the REEVOX-NUIT D’HIVER festival at GMEM in Marseille, ‘Nuit d’Hiver’ is a true musical hurricane of radical free jazz and “Spiritual Noise”. Such a gifted performance could only be blessed by immortal spirits like Cecyl Taylor, Sonny Sharrock, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman… an otherwordly Titans’ “beauty of the fury”!

Produced by MCIAA in their newly branded multi-dimensional, fully dynamics-frequency spectrum “STEROALIEN FIDELITY”, this LP will make your ears feel projected into an unexplored universe of sound.

MCIAA & JMM created a strongly conceptual and multi-sensorial work, an immersive music, visual and tactile experience: all covers are handmade one by one, with unique variations in colors and embossing/ debossing results. The cover artwork comes from a hand etching on vinyl by Roberto & Maurizio Opalio, then completed by JM Montera who printed every single cover jacket using the ancient tecniques of French “gravure” (75 hand-numbered exemplars on white jackets) and “marouflage” (25 signed and hand-numbered exemplars on black jackets).

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JOELLE VINCIARELLI - ' > ETERNAL BEYOND > II '
2020 - Private Press LP / Digital (Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers! / Opax)
UATWM 011 / OPX 043

Chapter II in the ongoing, electroshock project > ETERNAL BEYOND > carried out by My Cat Is An Alien and Joëlle Vinciarelli. > ETERNAL BEYOND > proudly fights to act as a dangerous, conspirative unit escaping all radars of our GPS-controlled society, re-affirming once again the total freedom of its unique music and vision. This second release demonstrates how much the partnership between the two space-brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio and the “French queen of grunt” Joëlle Vinciarelli (Talweg, La Morte Young) is growing stronger and stronger, following uniquely their own language. The trio deliberately imposes upon itself a self-exile over the edge of the sub-underground, since today the foundation of the so-called “underground music” has been corrupted for the sake of mere mystification and sneaky business. > ETERNAL BEYOND > fights for Authenticity against Emptyness.

Thus, take all your well-known notions of avant-garde, experimental music, noise, free jazz, drone, raga, minimalism, maximalism, primitive folk, ancient ritual music, ethnic sacred chants, total improvisation: shake them all together… and then thrash it all! > ETERNAL BEYOND > is “The New Thing” of tomorrow, “The New Unknown”.

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MCIAA XX Anniversary>> LISTEN >>

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / JEAN-MARC MONTERA / LEE RANALDO - 'MCIAA XX Anniversary'
2019 - Double LP+Artbook+DL / Artbook+DL / Digital (Antigravitational Records)
NTG-1001

On September 12, 2018 Sonic Youth co-founder Lee Ranaldo and guitarist extraordinaire Jean-Marc Montera joined Maurizio and Roberto Opalio in their hometown Torino, Italy, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the brothers’ visionary project My Cat Is An Alien. That evening the stage of Alfa Teatro—a liberty-style, historical theater built in 1928—hosted the live world premiere of this quartet, whose members already collaborated live and on records with each other during the years, yet never all the four together. The quartet live performance followed MCIAA’s radical aesthetic of “instantaneous composition”, where nothing is defined nor drafted prior to the act of music creation, and every sound and action is shaped around a higher-order scheme dictated by the empathy and synergy of the actual moment of enlightenment. The show was also accompanied by the projection of a brand new cinematic poetry dual film created by Roberto Opalio and previewed on the occasion, whose Super-8 film’s relentless flickering and ascending motion worked “ad hoc” to match the music and body gestures of the performance, thus enhancing its transcendental power.
That night Maurizio Opalio (self-made double-bodied wooden string instrument, pedal effects, bell), Roberto Opalio (wordless vocalizations, bodhran, Alientronics, electric guitar, space toys), Jean-Marc Montera (table top guitar, pedals, little gong), and Lee Ranaldo (vocals, electric guitar, bells) moved through still unexplored and unheard music territories.
This music is a pure ecstatic revelation, a unique, powerful and spiritual experience all of its own. Listening to this album we are offered a true epiphany as just uniquely gifted genius improvisers/composers of the past would grace our ears and souls.

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MCIAA-Spiritual Noise Vol 2>> LISTEN >>

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Spiritual Noise__Vol.2'
2019 - LP+Artbook+DL / Artbook+DL / Digital (Antigravitational Records)
NTG-1000

“Art is... nothing... if not vision. / Vision is... nothing... if not poetry. / Poetry is... nothing... if not music. / Music is... nothing... if not noise. / Noise is... nothing... if not spirit. / Spirit is... nothing... if not love. THURSTON MOORE, 2019 (dedication poem to My Cat Is An Alien’s “Spiritual Noise”).

"SPIRITUAL NOISE" is how My Cat Is An Alien baptized their own music and intermedia work at the beginning of their third decade of activity. Volume 2 in the ‘Spiritual Noise’ ongoing series is a further step ahead in the unheard new music territories of MCIAA. Released on the new ANTIGRAVITATIONAL imprint—the record label & multimedia platform created and curated by MCIAA and set up with gallerist and publisher Marco Contini—and designed following principles of seriality and of installation art, the vinyl LP takes the shape of a multimedia object which displays a proper artbook mounted on the cover jacket, and gives access to cinematic poetry films and extra contents for a fully immersive experience.

“After regularly immersing myself in the otherworldly vision of My Cat is an Alien for the last several years, I sometimes forget how incredibly far beyond recognizable, earthbound sounds the Opalios have traveled in their twenty years of recording. Aside from Roberto's spectral signature vocals, ‘Spiritual Noise’ feels like it could have been crafted almost entirely from haunting and mysterious transmissions picked up by the SETI institute.[..] Record store shelves are full of well-meaning bearded men wielding tablas and tamburas, hellbent on prying open my third eye or kicking down my doors of perception. Some of them have made some absolutely wonderful albums, but none have gone as far as My Cat is an Alien.” BRAINWASHED (USA)

“ ‘Spiritual Noise’ transcends the frontiers of advanced music. Superb! ” Rate 5/5 - LOOP. CL

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN_Spiritual Noise Vol1
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Spiritual Noise__Vol.1'
2019 - LP+Artbook+DL / Artbook+DL / Digital (Antigravitational Records)
NTG-0999

Debut release by the new ANTIGRAVITATIONAL imprint, the record label & multimedia platform created and curated by My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA), set up with gallerist and publisher Marco Contini.

"MCIAA PHASE THREE — WE BAPTIZE THE SPIRITUAL NOISE" reads Roberto Opalio’s aesthetics Manifesto: SPIRITUAL NOISE opens the third decade of activity by iconoclastic instantaneous composers, musicians, performers and visual artists Maurizio and Roberto Opalio.

Fully focused on MCIAA’s "aliencentric" vision, Antigravitational’s main purpose is to offer the experience of the deepest immersion in the sound and visual matter of each work of intermedia art by the brothers–as duo, as soloists, as well as in collaborations with some of the most talented artists of our time.
Pursuing their ongoing fight against the digital-only fruition of concepts and contents of today, MCIAA privilege the thingness of physical mediums to fix their art, aiming to survive the non-permanence over time.
Designed following principles of seriality and of installation art, each release takes the shape of a multimedia object which displays a proper artbook mounted on the LP cover jacket, and gives access to cinematic poetry films and extra contents as further investigations. Various combinations of objects and formats are intended to provide an ever-expanding universe of multistratified references and meanings.

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My Cat Is An Alien Thurston Moore PoesiaSonorAlienica
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & Thurston Moore - 'PoesiaSonorAlienica'
2018 - 7" White Flexi-disc (Opax 20th Private Press)

33 ⅓ RPM, Single Sided WHITE FLEXI-DISC pressed at GZ Vinyl.
Cover artwork by MCIAA on 140-gram white faux leather paper.
Limited handnumbered edition of 210 copies.

voices + sounds: MCIAA & THURSTON
art: MCIAA

PRIVATE EDITION TO CELEBRATE MCIAA'S 20TH ANNIVERSARY AND THURSTON'S 60TH BIRTHDAY

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'The Sky With Broken Arms'
2018 - CD / Digital (Elliptical Noise / Opax - Canada)
ΑΩ6577CD - OPX040

‘The Sky With Broken Arms’ is the brand new studio album by MY CAT IS AN ALIEN which officially opens the duo’s 20th ANNIVERSARY in 2018–a year rich of exciting projects, collaborations and releases. Brothers MAURIZIO and ROBERTO OPALIO have been active as radical instantaneous composers since the beginning in early 1998, their work always characterized by the willingness to challenge oneself and throw oneself forward towards the unknown realms of art, intended as the highest projection and expression of the self. This ongoing, imperative challenge brought MCIAA’s musical research towards constant innovation, making each of their 200+ musical releases a step onward, and their entire opus simply unique. “[..] there are few other artists who have been so unwaveringly challenging and iconoclastic for as long as the Opalios" (Anthony D’Amico, BRAINWASHED). The deep authenticity of their sound has always shined throughout the large number of collaborations set up during the years with vanguards such as SONIC YOUTH, JIM O'ROURKE, KEIJI HAINO, CHRISTIAN MARCLAY, MATS GUSTAFSSON, JEAN-MARC MONTERA, NELS CLINE, LOREN CONNORS, among many others. MCIAA’s rare live performances mirror the brothers’ vision of the creative act as the most powerful shamanic ritual, bringing together their performative action with the diverse aspects of their intermedia activities like the “cinematic poetry” films by Roberto Opalio. Their idiosyncratic improvising skill and extraordinary psychic connection have been under the radar of thousands of visitors during the opening days of the 57th VENICE ART BIENNALE in May 2017, when MCIAA activated the Studio Venezia project at the French Pavilion invited by artist XAVIER VEILHAN and curator CHRISTIAN MARCLAY.
The new album ‘The Sky With Broken Arms’ is therefore a further step ahead into the realm of the unknown, where the music made of minimal, dreamy guitar chords and eerie wordless vocals over a dense layer of crackling noise comes out of a strong conceptual idea.
As Roberto Opalio’s foreword to the work reads “A winter day two years ago I found out that an entire section of my vinyl records collection was completely ruined by an inexplicable oxidation process. [..] As a first reaction, I decided not to play those records ever again... and that I did, for a long time. ‘Til one night, exhausted, I felt the absolute urgency to listen to one of those LPs whose musical content got buried by the vinyl surface noise. In that moment the shocking epiphany: [..] slowly, I began to perceive that not only the old, beloved sounds I was used to were all still there, but also that the layer of ground noise obliged me to an even more attentive and active listening; thus I was discovering very subtle sound details now claiming their own being and pretending their own space. The idea of a new MCIAA album came out of this enlightenment. A new concept concerning the representation of music on the one hand and its perception on the other. A music so essential and precious as to be discovered by the listener little by little, because hidden by a blanket of crackling noise, which I obtained from the blank grooves of my damaged vinyls. Thus, here we are: infinite spaces of disintegration and psycho-existential ecstasy… essentially, spaces of non-limited, non-stoppable Poetry”.
The not-compressed, not-balanced mastering devised by MCIAA provides a natural, immersive listening experience. CD comes in full-color gatefold digisleeve. Cover art features an intense photography shot on 35mm slide film by Roberto Opalio. Artwork design by MCIAA.

WATCH OFFICIAL VIDEO

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ROBERTO OPALIO - 'Once you'll touch the sky you will never return to dust'
2018 - CD / Digital (Elliptical Noise / Opax - Canada)
ΑΩ6578CD - OPX041

‘Once you'll touch the sky you will never return to dust’ is the fifth studio album by ROBERTO OPALIO (“the more sinister half of MY CAT IS AN ALIEN” according to BYRON COLEY). Along with My Cat Is An Alien’s ‘The Sky With Broken Arms’, this solo release officially opens the duo’s 20th Anniversary in 2018–a year rich of exciting projects, collaborations and releases.
In addition to his innate, idiosyncratic improvisation skill, Roberto’s contribution to My Cat Is An Alien was to give the project a strong multimedia and visual esthetics which still stands out as a distinctive trait. He indeed created the “alien cat” logo, My Cat Is An Alien’s trademark, which was initially hand sprayed on the handcrafted covers of MCIAA’s first ‘self-titled’ CD-R, then associated with the brothers’ own Opax Records private imprint, printed on posters and t-shirts, even used as subject of some of the duo’s artist books. Having been doing painting, glass art and photography for several years before MCIAA formed, his own works in visual art revealed a rich source of material to use as cover artworks of the band’s 200+ albums released worldwide so far. Especially, Roberto Opalio’s iconic figure of the “Alien”, “[..] a stick figure with widely extended arms and legs, its head a single sharply elliptical eye, permanently open and staring out at the universe that surrounds it [..]” (Ken Hollings / THE WIRE), symbolizing the transfiguration of the existential vision of the last human being on Earth, gets painted, drawn or sculpted in iron wire in most of his works, including his “cinematic poetry” films projected during MCIAA’s live performances. Photography had a great impact on MCIAA’s imaginary as well, Roberto capturing with b&w 35mm films, slides and Polaroids thousands of views of his hometown Turin’s industrial monuments of early 1900’s before politicians demolished almost everything–this is the reason why the cover of MCIAA’s ‘Landscapes Of An Electric City’ released by THURSTON MOORE on his Ecstatic Peace! label is now a prime example of “ghost cover”. Polaroids played a distinctive role also during the band’s live performances: Roberto’s ‘On-Stage Live Action Series’ art installations testimony hundreds of shots taken while playing his trademarked “space toys”, which he abandoned in 2012 for primitive, modified electronic devices called “alientronics”.
Well known for his unique wordless vocalizations, his more sporadic spoken word poems reveal Roberto Opalio’s mastery in entitling all of MCIAA’s albums and pieces since the beginning. Roberto Opalio exhibited alongside artists such as MIKE KELLEY, RAYMOND PETTIBON, TONY CONRAD, JOHN CAGE, WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS, GERARD RICHTER to name a few. With his brother Maurizio he’s been under the radar of thousands of visitors during the opening days of the 57th Venice Art Biennale in May 2017, when MCIAA activated the Studio Venezia project at the French Pavilion invited by artist XAVIER VEILHAN and curator CHRISTIAN MARCLAY.
‘Once you'll touch the sky you will never return to dust’ is a new 1-hour long instantaneous composition performed with a prepared mini-keyboard, a handmade shortwave receiver and Roberto Opalio’s patented alientronics and wordless vocalizations. It is a masterpiece of modern minimalism, an ecstatic voyage where time and space lose their meaning, thus glorifying the poetic lyricism of the “here and now”, that “eternal now” that other visionary artists and vanguards of the past have always dealt with, from FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE to MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS. “Towards the Sun”, headed ARTHUR RIMBAUD. “Space Is The Place”, asserted SUN RA.
CD comes in full-color gatefold digisleeve. The not-compressed mastering devised by MCIAA provides a natural, immersive listening experience. Cover art features one of the most stunning paintings by Roberto Opalio, created just before the album was sent to the pressing plant. Artwork design by MCIAA.

WATCH OFFICIAL VIDEO

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - "RE-SI-STEN-ZA!"
2018 - Metallic Gold Wax color LP + DL card / Digital (Opax Records / Elliptical Noise)
OPX039

Private press edition. 2018 REISSUE - New Packaging. "Metallic gold" color vinyl LP. Design by MCIAA.
Black cardboard jacket with 11"x8" glossy, paste-on cover artwork. Includes 2 double-sided inserts with poem lyrics, photographs, foreword by Roberto Opalio, MCIAA's portrait, full credits. Plus full-album DL card.

As foretaste of My Cat Is An Alien’s 20th anniversary in winter 2017-2018, their new LP "RE-SI-STEN-ZA!" well represents the summa of the duo's music activity, from their early space toys-era to the latest self-made electronics and string instruments outputs. Featuring two of the duo's longest compositions, the album reaches 50 minutes of NEW ALIEN MUSIC at highest analog quality, that My Cat Is An Alien claim to be "the complete communion between Alpha and Omega".
“RE-SI-STEN-ZA!” is a super limited two-track juggernaut […] The title track finds MCIAA at the height of their wiring and warping powers, an absolute wig flipped tour de force that sees them morphing through elements of noise, musique concrete, stoner earthbeat and cosmic spiritualism to craft out a truly immense and often brutal cranium collapsing palette of psychotropic goo which across 25 minutes of head tripping groove shapeshifts with such out there aplomb that you literally fear your mind might fry.” – MARK BARTON (The Sunday Experience)
"In 'Let Their Voices Speak Through The Wind', the voice becomes the key cornerstone of the instantaneous composition by transcending itself into a flux of infinite voices dislocated throughout the atemporal dimension of the Spheres, which float in the ether and permeate our physical bodies like “cosmic debris” lulled by the wind. Voices of ghosts that represent a blinding light within the deepest darkness of this more and more sad and lost Planet, and that leave a trace of beauty and existential meaning in our lives." - ROBERTO OPALIO (from liner notes)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / OSKAR PANIZZA - 'Le Jardin de Vréneli'
2018 - 3"CD+BOOK+POSTER (Editions Lenka lente - France)

A story of love and drunkenness with Venus in Zurich's forest, by avant-garde German writer and poet Oskar Panizza (1853-1921), well known for his "The Love Council".
This edition comes with a musical piece and illustrations by experimental intermedia duo My Cat Is An Alien.
Translation by Pierre Gallissaires.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JEAN-MARC MONTERA Union Of The Supreme Light
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JEAN-MARC MONTERA - 'Union Of The Supreme Light'
2017 - LP + DL coupon / Digital (Starlight Furniture Co. / Revolver USA)

Full-color cover painting by Roberto Opalio gives the album its title. Old-style tip-on jacket with early ‘60s jazz design on the back, including photos, and liner notes by French critic and writer Philippe Robert. Includes free digital download.

Joining Maurizio and Roberto Opalio on their fourth album for Starlight Furniture Co., legendary French-Corsican guitarist and co-founder of Groupe de Recherche et d’Improvisation Musicales brings his noisy lyricism to three long tracks of oddly sensual and animalistic space howl. As their past collaborations attest, My Cat Is An Alien’s self-sustaining biosphere is an environment where the surreal dreamscapes of mavericks and eccentrics flourish. On this live recording, Jean-Marc Montera’s home-made guitar table, objects, and electronics forge metallic ribbons that twitch between the distant clangs of gigantic spores, while Maurizio (on home-made double-bodied string instrument and effects) and Roberto (on alientronics, effects, and modified electronic devices) set worms adrift in a zero-gravity aviary stocked with narcotized satsuma fowl. Roberto adds disorientation to the trio’s fog-blurred horizon with wordless vocalizations that could pass for billowing laments hooted by mutant sea mammals with enoki mushrooms growing on their larynxes.

“Since the late 1990s My Cat Is An Alien have successfully renewed a commitment to psychedelia as a revealing factor of the soul," says French critic and writer Philippe Robert. "Brothers Roberto and Maurizio Opalio’s interest in John Cage’s thought and in free improvisation is hardly a secret; hence the attraction toward architectures based on the concept of instantaneous composition, created from extended practices. In March 2015, serendipity brought together My Cat Is An Alien and guitarist Jean-Marc Montera in Marseille, for a concert where complicity manifested itself immediately, thanks to simpatico affinities (Montera in France is a pioneer of non-idiomatic improvisation) and encounters (among which we will just mention Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo). The trio set out for the beyond, in search of the Harmony of the Spheres, as they have, again and again". - PHILIPPE ROBERT, author of "Musiques Expèrimentales"

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & NAD SPIRO - La Casa Encendida

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & NAD SPIRO - 'La Casa Encendida'
2017 - CS 60 (Sloow Tapes, Belgium)

Limited handmade edition of 100 copies.
Instantaneous composition performed and recorded live at La Casa Encendida in Madrid, April 29, 2012.
Unfolding galaxies of shooting stars slowed down to my speed. Another blast from the alien void.
Includes a spoken word introduction and text insert by Mk Ibañez.

Maurizio Opalio - self-made double-bodied string instrument, pedal effects, real-time loops
Roberto Opalio - wordless vocalizations, alientronics, pedal effects, modified electronic devices
Nad Spiro aka Rosa Arruti - electric guitar, fx pedals
MK Ibáñez - introVOX + text (Mess/Age.)


Artwork - acrylic painting and handwriting by Roberto Opalio. Layout by MCIAA

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "RE-SI-STEN-ZA!"
>> LISTEN >>


MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - "RE-SI-STEN-ZA!"
2016 - Metallic Gold Wax color LP + DL card / Digital (Opax Records / Elliptical Noise)
OPX039

Private press edition. Gorgeous "Metallic Gold Wax" color LP limited to 300 copies. Jacket designed and handcrafted by MCIAA. Tri-fold sleeve in brown tobacco, textured fine art cardboard, with 12”x16” folded cover/insert. Includes antique map replica poster plus 3 special inserts on parchment paper with full credits, photographs, a foreword by Roberto Opalio, and a new MCIAA's portrait on Western Alps. Full-album Digital Download collector's card.

As foretaste of My Cat Is An Alien’s 20th anniversary in winter 2017-2018, their new LP "RE-SI-STEN-ZA!" well represents the summa of the duo's music activity, from their early space toys-era to the latest self-made electronics and string instruments outputs. Featuring two of the duo's longest compositions, the album reaches 50 minutes of NEW ALIEN MUSIC at highest analog quality, that My Cat Is An Alien claim to be "the complete communion between Alpha and Omega".
“RE-SI-STEN-ZA!” is a super limited two-track juggernaut […] The title track finds MCIAA at the height of their wiring and warping powers, an absolute wig flipped tour de force that sees them morphing through elements of noise, musique concrete, stoner earthbeat and cosmic spiritualism to craft out a truly immense and often brutal cranium collapsing palette of psychotropic goo which across 25 minutes of head tripping groove shapeshifts with such out there aplomb that you literally fear your mind might fry.” – MARK BARTON (The Sunday Experience)
"In 'Let Their Voices Speak Through The Wind', the voice becomes the key cornerstone of the instantaneous composition by transcending itself into a flux of infinite voices dislocated throughout the atemporal dimension of the Spheres, which float in the ether and permeate our physical bodies like “cosmic debris” lulled by the wind. Voices of ghosts that represent a blinding light within the deepest darkness of this more and more sad and lost Planet, and that leave a trace of beauty and existential meaning in our lives." - ROBERTO OPALIO (from liner notes)

Artwork by MCIAA.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JOËLLE VINCIARELLI > ETERNAL BEYOND >
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JOËLLE VINCIARELLI > ETERNAL BEYOND >
2016 - Marble Stone color LP + DL card / Digital (Opax Records / Arsenic Solaris / Up Against The Wall, Motherfuckers!)
OPX038 / AS-006 / UATWM 007

Limited edition of 300. Special "Marble Stone" color vinyl. Lavishly glossy printed jacket, with artwork by MCIAA. The "Eternal Stone" features on front cover, hold by Roberto Opalio's shamanic hands. 50 minutes of music at highest analog quality. Includes extended foreword by music critic and writer PHILIPPE ROBERT. Full-album Digital Download collector's card.

> ETERNAL BEYOND > is a collaborative project set up by brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio aka MY CAT IS AN ALIEN (MCIAA) and JOËLLE VINCIARELLI (Talweg, La Morte Young). All began in Spring 2015, when outsider instantaneous composers MCIAA traced a new magic triangle on a map between their hometown Torino, their current “Alien Zone” secret base in Western Alps, and the mysterious area over Nice’s hills known as Le Village Nègre. Not far from there, in the small and private recording studio of French underground queen Joëlle Vinciarelli, MCIAA recorded and produced a long session of instantaneous compositions where the duo’s otherwordly sounds and Roberto’s eerie wordless vocals melted with Vinciarelli’s unique, underwordly voice. An antique upright piano soundboard, self-made wooden string instruments, modified electronic devices, an old pendulum clock mechanism, bells and an old trumpet were played during the 4-day recording session. The result, purposely bypassing the present, builds a bridge between the archaic and the future, leading the way to what can only be defined as a groundbreaking > ETERNAL BEYOND >.

Tracklist:
1. > ETERNAL BEYOND - PRELUDIO >
2. > ETERNAL MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL >
3. > ETERNAL ALBERT AYLER >
4. > ETERNAL ECLIPSE DU SOLEIL >
5. > ETERNAL BEYOND - POSTLUDIO >

Artwork by MCIAA. Photo by Maurizio Opalio, hands courtesy of shaman Roberto Opalio

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / GELBA split cassette

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / GELBA - TAPE CRASH SERIES #15
2016 - C45 Cassette (Old Bicycle Records / CH)
OBR033

The Tape Crash series comes to an end with the fifteenth split between two Italian projects among the most intriguing in years.
MCIAA has just come of age (the debut was in 1998) and the team created by Opalio brothers managed to build over the years with productions in own and a sound partnership peculiarities making them increasingly valuable over time, like a dust alien among the dross of a psychedelic staff.
Gelba is the creature of Mazzani Michele and Matteo Poggi, Italian subversive in various music fields, including black metal, drones, psychedelia and artistic fury. A final right for a deliberately boundless necklace, with an exceptional artwork by Alberto Brunello.

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN (Side A) – "The Revenge Of The Fallen Star"

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'The Dance Of Oneirism'
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'The Dance Of Oneirism'
2015 - 2xLP + ARTBOOK / Digital (Backwards)
BW19

- STANDARD EDITION - LTD ED of 300 copies. 3-Sided LP. Black vinyl. Silver, Blue and White screenprinted vinyl on SIDE D. Comes with a 24 pages Art Book & poem postcard by ROBERTO OPALIO, plus foreword insert by DAVID KEENAN.

- DELUXE EDITION - LTD ED of 80 copies. 3-Sided LP. LP 1 on COLOR vinyl, LP 2 on black vinyl. SIDE D screenprinted in COPPER. Comes with a 24 pages Art Book & poem postcard by ROBERTO OPALIO, plus foreword insert by DAVID KEENAN.

- ART BOX EDITION - Limited to 21 copies. Comes in copper screenprinted BOX set & handmade insert signed and numbered by ROBERTO OPALIO. Contains the DELUXE EDITION of the album.

- ART BOOK - The 24-pages Art Book & poem postcard by ROBERTO OPALIO is also available separately, in an edition of 50 exemplars, signed by the artist.

NEW My Cat Is An Alien studio double album!
From the extended foreword insert by David Keenan: "The central fact of MCIAA’s music has always been space but they have never sounded quite so far away, so removed. [...] The music is extremely sensual. The rhythms have a contrary cold/organic quality to them, the feel of the pulse as the breath is held, but soon even that dies down and we are left with an extended, timeless moment, the space between one breath and the next. Occasionally there is the sound of strings, strange steel resonances that populate the music like ghosts, the ghosts of Roscoe Holcomb’s high, lonesome sound, of Dock Boggs and the sanctified steel of Washington Phillips. Ash Ra Tempel met Timothy Leary in the Alps [...] The transmissions are fuzzy up here and at points it makes for a music of almost terrifying quiet. It is minimal, sure, but MCIAA are not so much interested in repetition as in eternal expansion. [...] The Dance Of Oneirism is a music of unknowing, a dance with a phantom, the letting go of a dream. It is MCIAA’s greatest long form work. It has tributaries that run deep into the past, ghost channels that facilitate two-way travel, even as its destination, in the words of the late Conrad Schnitzler, is determinedly future, future, future." - DAVID KEENAN

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Wire Tapper 37 feat. MY CAT IS AN ALIEN
The Wire Tapper 37 feat. MY CAT IS AN ALIEN

VVAA - THE WIRE TAPPER # 37
2015 - magazine + CD comp (THE WIRE MAGAZINE, issue #374, April 2015)

The latest volume in THE WIRE magazine's series of experimental and underground music compilations featuring 20 new, rare or unreleased tracks.

My Cat Is An Alien contribute:
The Dance Of Oneirism #3 (excerpt)”

From 'The Dance Of Oneirism' 3-sided LP (Backwards)

Brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio formed My Cat Is An Alien in late 1997 and have since collaborated with Christian Marclay, Keiji Haino, Michael Morley, Jim O’Rourke, Mats Gustafsson, Sonic Youth and Savage Pencil among others. After reshaping their sound with self-made string instruments and reassembled electronic devices, MCIAA’s music has recently incorporated trance-like electronic beats. Their new album The Dance Of Oneirism is released this month by Backwards.

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My Cat Is An Alien & Jüppala Kääpiö

My Cat Is An Alien & Jüppala Kääpiö

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JUPPALA KAAPIO - 'Black Blossom'
2014 - CD-R / Digital (Omnimemento)
OM14

Cover: Mirror coated paper, Various card stocks, Hand printed silk-screen
Limited 50 copies (numbered on a card)

 

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2014 - C45 Cassette (Neurec / Japan)
Cover: Japanese paper, Inkjet print, P-case
Limited 100 copies (1st edition: 45 copies)

"The vibrations from the stars are collected in their hands, embraced until becoming small crystals.
The lucid drops are poured into an amber stream, traveling with sundry minerals, then finally delivered to the eternal space.
Gigantic black petals are foamed by the enriched vibrations. The gradual blooming makes the endless darkness trembles.
The pollens have finally returned to the origin, and the flickers are waiting for the moment to be implanted in your imagination."
- Hitoshi Kojo, November 2014

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Abstract Expressionism For The Ears
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & CÉDRIC STEVENS - 'Abstract Expressionism For The Ears'
2014 - 3xLP + DL coupon (Opax Records)
OPX037

Housed in heavy duty full color laminated jacket. Includes Digital Download card of entire album. Limited to only 300 copies. Artwork and all titles curated by visual artist Roberto Opalio.

Debut release of the new collaborative project of outsider duo of musicians and visual artists MY CAT IS AN ALIEN and Belgian electronic composer CÉDRIC STEVENS. Over 2 hours of new music as human ears have never heard before and will never do if you miss this unique chance! --
In February 2014 brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio aka My Cat Is An Alien spent a residency in Brussels for a long studio session in trio with Cédric Stevens (aka Acid Kirk), who recently collaborated in Fennesz's new album. With the support of La Communauté Française De Belgique the entire session is now available in its entirety on MCIAA’s legendary Opax Records, in the form of this colossal triple LP set entitled 'Abstract Expressionism For The Ears'. The session is made of long-form pieces instantaneously composed, recorded and mixed by the trio during those incredibly intense days and nights of recordings.
Dreamy architectures of sounds, floating sculptures of abstract drones and cannibal noise, modal piano, ancestral strings and electronic futurism, celestial music of the Spheres, imbued with impressive textures of vocal exorcisms by Roberto Opalio. Again your ears won’t find any point of reference when listening to this transcendent and essential work!
Instantaneously composed, performed and produced by My Cat Is An Alien & Cédric Stevens. Roberto Opalio: wordless vocalizations, alientronics, pedal effects, electronic devices, vertical piano; Maurizio Opalio: self-made string instrument, pedal effects, cymbal, piano strings, Roberto’s piano real-time loops; Cédric Stevens: electric guitar, analogue modular system, minimoog, various analogue pedals.
Tracklisting:
Side A. Tasting The New Ether (22:25)
Side B. Intersection Of Shadows (25:04)
Side C. When The Sun Goes Down There’s Nothing Left To Tune - part I (19:14)
Side D. When The Sun Goes Down There’s Nothing Left To Tune - part II (17:31)
Side E. Shifting At Zero Gravity (25:02)
Side F-1. The Ineffable Call Of Tomorrow (14:46)
Side F-2. Just A Tone Of White Over Blue (4:36)

My Cat Is An Alien is the duo formed by outsider artists Maurizio and Roberto Opalio. After 16 years of intense activity, more than 100 albums released by prestigious labels worldwide (Ecstatic Peace!, Atavistic, Important, Eclipse, Starlight Furniture Co., Very Friendly/Cargo), collaborations with luminaries such as Christian Marclay, Jim O'Rourke, Thurston Moore, Nels Cline, Mats Gustafsson, Lee Ranaldo, Keiji Haino to name just a few, they also appeared on the cover of The Wire magazine.
"Roberto and Maurizio use their weird arsenal of homemade instruments and detourned toys to create an absolute monolith of abstract psychedelia. Simultaneously nightmarish, overwhelming, and inspired, My Cat is an Alien have concocted an epic, brain-frying bad trip like no else before." BRAINWASHED

Cédric Stevens kicked off his career as a DJ and techno composer / producer under the pseudonym "Acid Kirk" in 1993. He quickly established himself as one of the most revered figures in the Belgian and international scene. He played in world's major cities - New York, Melbourne, Paris, Rome, Berlin (Love Parade) sharing the bill with many of the biggest international DJs, including Jeff Mills and Laurent Garnier. In 1997, driven by his interest in free jazz, alternative, psychedelic ambient, experimental and avant-garde music, he launched his project The Syncopated Elevators Legacy (S.E.L.), which caught the attention of Christian Fennesz, My Cat Is An Alien, and the late John Peel. He collaborates and now appears in Fennesz's new album ‘Bécs’ (Mego). His new solist LP ‘Hanging In The Wires’ is out now on Discrepant.
''Instead of vintage throwback, S.E.L. provides bubbles of early 21st century electronic futurism.'' EXPERIMEDIA
''There’s something very tangible and three-dimensional about Stevens’ sound creation. He displays a captivating understanding of the ways in which audio can appear to adopt an illusionary presence within physical space” ATTN: Magazine
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ROBERTO OPALIO Aurora Coelestis
>> LISTEN >>

ROBERTO OPALIO - 'Aurora Coelestis'
2014 - LP + DL coupon (Opax Records)
OPX036

Fourth soloist album and debut on vinyl format by musician and visual artist ROBERTO OPALIO of radical avant-garde duo My Cat Is An Alien. ‘Aurora Coelestis’ presents two new instantaneous compositions for glockenspiel and voice, recorded in March 2014 at his Alien Studio for audiovisual arts, Torino, Italy. For the first time his musical work is mainly instrumental: ‘Aurora Coelestis’ is Roberto Opalio’s homage to early minimalism. The work is intended to be listened to at soft volume level, quietly in a room. The same glockenspiel used in the recording has then been cut into pieces to become the core of the spectacular art gallery edition of the album.

“Roberto Opalio, the more sinister half of My Cat Is An Alien, has finally released a non-lathe solo LP in order to demonstrate his mastery of space junk. The two parts of the title track, “Aurora Coelestis”, are incredible glides through the darkest recesses of solar system. The music was created on glockenspiel, then run through Roberto's homemade electronics in a way that extends celestial glimmering into eruptive plains of infinity. Cosmic burbles worthy of Gong mix with expansive tones that make me think of what Richard Brautigan's Machines of Loving Grace might sound like. It's almost the same as listening to one of those computers that generates sounds from stellar radiation. Beautiful, cold and deep. It will make all of your bones feel very soft.
The third piece, “Hic et Nunc” is a piece for manipulated vocals. The title is Latin for “Here and Now” and may refer to either the Gong-related UK band of the '70s, or the impermanence of language, or both. The music is like being sucked through a long tube that lights up and resonates as you pass along sections of it. Alien lips quiver nearby and you can smell a kind of breath you have never smelled before. It's a wonderful trip through bubble time, and one suspects it would be an excellent soundtrack for your next bout with hallucinogens. If that's not your thing, just lie down in the dark and concentrate hard on the sounds. You'll be flying soon enough. Have a nice ride.” –BYRON COLEY, 2014

This is a private press, handcrafted by Roberto and Maurizio Opalio and released on their own legendary Opax Records. 165 gram black vinyl housed in tri-fold jacket made of fine art 250 gram clear blue textured cardboard, with 12”x16” full color folded cover/insert featuring a portrait of the artist taken by Maurizio Opalio on front and a photographic image by Roberto Opalio on the inside, plus full liner notes. Foreword insert by Byron Coley.
The album comes with 3 collector’s editions cover art: each cover features 1 of 3 different 4”x6” original photographs shot by Roberto Opalio mounted on back, representing diverse perspectives of the glockenspiel used by the artist during the session. Handnumbered and handstamped. Limited Private Press of 200.
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My Cat Is An Alien_PSYCHO-SYSTEM
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'PSYCHO-SYSTEM'
2013 - 6CD Box Set + DL (Elliptical Noise / Canada)
alphaomega6571-76CD

 

My Cat Is An Alien’s most extreme work to date. The most advanced expression of their current creative method of composition through the brothers' brand new self-made strings and electronic instrumentation.

 

PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM
PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM PSYCHO-SYSTEM

 

!!! WARNING !!! prolonged exposure to sounds and high volume listening can cause episodes of psychotic break with reality, hallucinations, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, catatonia.

It is recommended to relax and enjoy the Psycho-System experience.

 

The BOX comes with full-color artwork, extensive liner notes and credits, plus 2 exclusive art cards; every box contains a download coupon of entire work.
WATCH the official trailer here

 

Tracklist:

Disc 1 | "PSYCHO-SYSTEM #1 - Hallucination"

Disc 2 | "PSYCHO-SYSTEM #2 - Catatonia"

Disc 3 | "PSYCHO-SYSTEM #3 - Delirium"

Disc 4 | "PSYCHO-SYSTEM #4 - Catharsis"

Disc 5 | "PSYCHO-SYSTEM #5 - Bipolarism"

Disc 6 | "PSYCHO-SYSTEM #6 - Enlightenment"


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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN with NELS CLINE- 'The Ocean Above Your Heads'
2013 - LP (Starlight Furniture Co. / Revolver USA)
*26

Limited edition vinyl LP in super deluxe, full-colour printed jacket, featuring cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

The idea of a recording collaboration by Nels Cline and My Cat Is An Alien was born one day in Torino, Italy, while Cline was touring with Wilco in 2007. After two other intersections of their respective orbits (first at Victoriaville, then at a UK All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in 2006), Cline eventually mailed them a CDR of prepared and heavily effected electric guitar improvisations, recorded in a small studio in Los Angeles. He tossed them off with little concern about exactly what would happen to the recordings, though his familiarity with i fratelli Opalio and their work steered the technically proficient jams familiar to fans of Nels Cline Singers, Scarnella or L. Stinkbug deep into zones of space noise, bold cosmic disruptions and nattering squibs from decommissioned satellites.

Exploiting the carte blanche they were given to do whatever they wanted with his recordings, Maurizio and Roberto Opalio opted to maintain as much as possible the spirit of free improv and instantaneous composition; Cline’s recording remained unheard until the actual recording session in 2012. Upon recognizing the planets were in proper alignment, Roberto and Maurizio’s Alien Zone studio in the Western Alps vibrated with the first playback of the CDR and My Cat Is An Alien’s simultaneous real-time accompaniment, without overdubs or outtakes. 

The results throb like an Argento soundtrack for an astral perv lair, recalling vintage cassette gorp from the golden age of industrial, when field recordings of howling dogs were repurposed as documents of institutional degradation and mind control. Dusted with loops from a lunar cathedral where palsied zombies dragging pots and pans skid across the soap-slathered narthex, The Ocean Above Your Heads splays the hemispheres better than Subotnik goin’ off his meds. (label info)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Alien, All Too Alien'
2013 - LP + DL (Trensmat Records / Ireland)
TR37

VERY limited edition coloured vinyl LP in colour heavy card sleeve. Featuring artwork by Roberto Opalio.

"Their cat may well be all too alien but there's quite an earthly feel to this epic voyage of a record from the brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio. It feels like you are slowly drifting through different continents perched on a floating glass-domed steel barge, observing the strangely contrasting cultures go about their business, seemingly unaware they are being watched.

Though there are certain sounds contained herein that are quite familiar to many 21st century homosapiens, much of the content is wildly skewed and disorientating. Maybe this is a (heavily medicated) alien's impression of earth? See? This place isn't so bad - call off the invasion guys, MCIAA will take you to their dealer. And their dealer, it would seem, is a muse that still fires up the siblings enough to produce an enthralling LP such as this despite umpteen scores of releases and side-projects since the late 90s.

Multi-layered hums and whirrs are punctuated and punctured with all manner of exotic percussion, twanging strings, quaintly retro synthetic bloops, lonesome harmonica, and human babble. Your focus will no doubt shift between the different levels of activity, often leaving you wondering when a particular sonic strand you had previously been following actually ceased - and just how long exactly has that guitar strumming been going on!? These hyper-prolific brothers from Turin shroud each transition with unearthly skill.

There are two side-long trips you can take - preferably in the order they were intended - though guaranteed there will be several hundred details you will have missed, ensuring a prolonged stint on the turntable.
So, give a knock on the dome and pull up a captain's chair beside your green-hued travel companion and see your world through different (bug-)eyes.." (Trensmat)

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>>read reviews here
MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Art Is A Tear Of Noise And Infinite Silence'
2012 - Double LP + DL coupon (Discrepant / UK)
CREP06

Deluxe, full-color heavyweight gatefold jacket; 12"x24" cover art painting by Roberto Opalio.

"Clandestine auteurs the Opalio Brothers, Roberto and Maurizio Opalio (aka My Cat Is An Alien) have deftly sprinkled our solar system with their beautifully fragile, arcane soundscapes, as well as multimedia collaborations with vanguards such as Sonic Youth, Christian Marclay, Keiji Haino, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Jim O'Rourke, Mats Gustafsson and many more. They now present a new phase of their already-celebrated body of work by abandoning their signature guitars and "space toys" and swapping them for a new set of homemade string instruments and reassembled electronic devices.
Roberto says: "Me and my brother decided to create a new beginning in sound: I started working with a totally new set of modified, de-constructed, electronic devices, while my brother self-made a peculiar double-bodied string instrument." This double LP, made only with this new set of instruments, comprises seven instantaneous compositions, with neither overdubs nor outtakes."

*NOTE: An intentional locked groove was placed after A1 to bring the listener's mind to reflect on the sense of the "Preludio" the stylus will be locked after A1 until the listener moves it manually to A2 (the proper beginning of the work)

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BROTHERS FROM ANOTHER SPACE - 'ALIENACUSTICA'
2012 - 3CD Box Set (Elliptical Noise / Canada)
alphaomega6568-70CD

'ALIENACUSTICA' is a superb collection of works by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) as you have never heard before. Forget all MCIAA's noise records... this is a totally different affair: starting from January 2006 they have released 3 unusual, completely acoustic works, all in limited and sold-out editions: a soloist split lp, a private art edition cd-r, and an out-of-print cd. The different approach to these works shows another side of the Opalio brothers' musical universe: all of the electric guitars and electronic effects that have been characterizing My Cat Is An Alien from the beginning are here left aside to give space to classical and acoustic guitar strings, and to Roberto's "human" voice as a primordial instrument.
Indeed, they decided to collect these precious gems under the pseudonym of BROTHERS FROM ANOTHER SPACE, so to point out how much these works are "alien" to the rest of their immense corpus of work.
Within this triple box set it reigns the celestial harmony of the same matter their beloved Western Alps are made of, as it comes out from the recordings themselves (most of which made in Spring), sometimes hiding the surrounding nature's sounds, like birds singing through the leafy branches of the trees outside the brothers' Alien Zone studio, as well as the creaking of their HQs' wood floor echoing inside their acoustic guitar bodies, the whole creating a really unique atmosphere.
Cover artwork - drawing by Roberto Opalio.

DISC 1 - ROBERTO OPALIO / MAURIZIO OPALIO 'In The Middle Of The Air / Glacier Sommeiller'
DISC 2 - MAURIZIO & ROBERTO OPALIO 'Liquid Spring'
DISC 3 - MY CAT IS AN ALIEN 'Folclore Alieno'

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>> LISTEN >>

MUSIC FOR PHANTOMS - 'I-II-III'
2012 - 3CD Box Set (Elliptical Noise / Canada)
alphaomega6565-67CD

This is the official debut of the Opalio brothers' new project called MUSIC FOR PHANTOMS. It is a totally acoustic and a very ambitious project dedicated to "total quietness", recorded in the mountains and ONLY during the night. This is the most haunted music you can ever imagine, created playing exclusively wooden instruments: a classical guitar, and an acoustic guitar; all instrumental. This music makes you taste the distant echoes coming from the other side. Nothing can be more true. In November 2007 Maurizio and Roberto Opalio released the first album of this collection (entitled 'I') as a private press art edition cd-r of only 99 copies. On April 28 and July 20, 2010, they recorded the following two albums ('II' and 'III'), presented for the first time in this triple box set.

"music for phantoms is the thin curtain which permeates your neurons_music for phantoms is the numbness of the fog that holds you with its silver fluxus_music for phantoms is the whisper of the promised first snow_music for phantoms is the atonal sing-song of the branches soaked with memory reverbered by the wind_music for phantoms is the view through the praxinoscope of the Great Void_music for phantoms is the murmur of the golden leaves stripped by the agony of the autumn sun_music for phantoms is the pure vivid white light as itself that does not mind to show its necessity to the world_music for phantoms is everything shining beyond space and time_music for phantoms is the shadow of the instant just sacrified in its becoming_music for phantoms is the consciousness of the senselessness of what comes afterwards_music for phantoms is the limbo between this and the other dimension_music for phantoms is the blinding darkness coming from a dying flame while a new light is yet to be found over a less and less definite horizon". - Roberto Opalio

Cover artwork - b/w film photographs by Roberto Opalio

"Another rewarding sonic step into new territory from the Opalio brothers. Superb and atmospheric, a pagan ceremony to welcome winter in a forest, dancing between the unknown strange states of mind, haunted and compelling through out" (Musique Machine)

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PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST - 'Transparent Winter'
2012 - CD (Silentes / Seven Solar Metals / Italy)
Season Two

After the enthusiastically acclaimed release on Tokyo's legendary P.S.F. label, hailed as a return to the ancient spirit of Japanese national poetry, PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST simply demonstrate there's anything else like their music around the world right now. The trio of Ramona Ponzini (Praxinoscope, Z'ev, Black Magic Disco) with Roberto & Maurizio Opalio (aka My Cat Is An Alien) returns on planet Earth for a new full length release of extended songs. PPOPG create some wonderfully fragile and unusual experiments that fall somewhere between folk, psychedelia and drone. Ramona Ponzini sings in Japanese as well as contributing furin, metal and wooden Japanese wind chimes. These are combined with Maurizio Opalio on acoustic guitar, and Roberto Opalio on mini keyboard, bodhran, alientronics, and wordless vocalizations. The trio's eclectic setup helps them create some truly luscious and mysterious music that is perfectly fragile, strange, distant and delicate.
You already had a little taste of the work in October 2011, when Blackest Rainbow Records released a limited and now sold-out LP edition featuring 2 tracks of the album ('Mars Appears' and 'The Mountain'), presented here in an alternate mix version. This CD contains the whole recording session of the work entitled 'Transparent Winter', including 33 minutes of previously unreleased material ('Notes From A Telephone Conversation', 'Winter Is Coming', 'Ochitsubaki'), plus a bonus ghost track, for a total of 80 minutes of entranced music! While the short, final track 'Ochitsubaki' is still inspired by Yosano Akiko's poetic work, the entire rest of the work features lyrics excerpts from Takamura Kotaro's poems carefully selected by Ramona Ponzini.

"Otherworldly is maybe the most apt description for their fragile, distanced songcraft, compositions which transport us to liminal fantasy spaces of gently suspenseful psychedelia, strangely inviting and comforting trance-like states". (Boomkat)

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CÉDRIC STEVENS / + remixes by FENNESZ, LEYLAND KIRBY, MY CAT IS AN ALIEN, BURNING STAR CORE, MOTION SICKNESS OF TIME TRAVEL, SYLVAIN CHAVEAU
'The Syncopated Elevators Legacy'

2012 - 2LP (Discrepant / UK)
CREP03

Limited edition of 500 on 180g vinyl housed in double gatefold jacket.
Discrepant Records collect nine highlights of Cédric Stevens' oeuvre 1997-2005, backed with new and exclusive revisions by Leyland Kirby, Burning Star Core, Fennesz, Motion Sickness Of Time Travel, Sylvain Chaveau and My Cat Is An Alien. Whilst he's best recognised to raving throngs as Acid Kirk, Cédric Stevens most intriguing music was made on analogue modular systems under the now defunct Syncopated Elevators Legacy moniker and released on his own Elf Cut imprint and Ambivalence recordings from his native Belgium. These recordings are very much "of their time", twisting the established contours of early-mid '90s ambient and experimental electronics with a keener psychedelic edge reminding of certain moments from Jim O'Rourke and early Fennesz, arranging abstract and elusive sounds with intricate, weaving structures and a taste for sweetly soured synthetic dissonance. The album of remixes update and diverge his original material in myriad ways. An excellent collection - and a killer set of remixes.

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN contribute a 11 minutes remix / reflection on 'The Siamese Level (Playground Emulation)'

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>> read review

PRAXINOSCOPE - 'Inward Eye'
2012 - LP (Lost Treasures Of The Underworld / USA)
LTLP10

The edition is limited to 287 and vinyl comes in three different colors: marble orange, marble white, and black. The record is housed in a 12" cloth bag, with front, back and inner fully screen-printed with artwork reproducing a painting by Roberto Opalio. Secret messages are written between the grooves and both sides' center labels, that feature mysterious, full-color portraits of Ramona and Roberto respectively on each side. Each copy hand-numbered and hand-stamped, reporting the exact date of printing .

Ramona Ponzini (Japanese bells & wind chimes, shion, vocals); Roberto Opalio (vocalizations, all effects, mini-keyboard, bodhran drum).

'INWARD EYE' is the fourth album by PRAXINOSCOPE, recorded by Roberto Opalio at My Cat Is An Alien's private studio in Western Alps, during the long cold winter 2008. The work, investigated by Ken Hollings while writing MCIAA's cover article for the Wire, was therein presented: "As if powered by primordial forces, MCIAA's homemade universe continues to expand. You get the impression they really do dedicate all their time to their art. More ambitious still are their collaborations with Ramona Ponzini, who was for many years MCIAA's manager before she took up a full-time study of Japanese language and poetry at the university in Turin. Either working with both brothers as Painting Petals On Planet Ghost or with Roberto alone as PRAXINOSCOPE, Ramona brings a refined physicality to MCIAA's alien cosmology. Her study of Japanese literature from the Heian Period, which corresponds roughly to the European Middle Ages, relates closely to their preoccupations with change and disappearance. 'INWARD EYE' brings this connection closer still." (Ken Hollings, The Wire).
Here's an excerpt conversation from the interview:
RAMONA: "Concerning Praxinoscope, I think Roberto and I interact in a very violent and savage way."
ROBERTO: "This is very funny, I was just explaining that you and I recorded it when we were alone in the mountains during the winter, when there were walls of snow around the studio. I described our session as very quiet, like a sort of meditation, and now you use the word 'violent'."
RAMONA: "Because I'm describing what I'm feeling inside of me. Maybe something that sublimates violence can appear quiet."
ROBERTO: "I agree"

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Living on the Invisible Line'
2011 - LP / DL (Divorce Records / Canada)
D38

Since 1997 Italian brother duo My Cat Is An Alien has been documenting an ever deepening musical dreamscape, their massive body of work representing some of the most emotive and soulful improvised experimentalism in underground music. Recorded in a remote region of the Western Alps, this latest LP navigates especially tranquil territory as it builds blissed-out pastoral mirages, dappled just slightly with glimmers of an outer darkness. Like much of the duo's best work, Living On the Invisible Line aims for transcendence, leaving behind only spinning heads and zoned souls. Edition of 500. Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

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PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST - 'Transparent Winter'
2011 - LP (Blackest Rainbow Records / UK)
BRR220

'Transparent Winter' follows on from the debut release on the always excellent Time-Lag label and the latest, enthusiastically acclaimed CD on Tokyo's legendary P.S.F. records. Painting Petals On Planet Ghost is the trio of Ramona Ponzini with Roberto & Maurizio Opalio (aka My Cat Is An Alien). Here they return for a new full length vinyl release on Blackest Rainbow. PPOPG create some wonderfully fragile and unusual experiments that fall somewhere between folk, psychedelia and drone. Ramono Ponzini sings in Japanese as well as contributing 'furin, metal and wooden japanese wind chimes'. These are combined with Maurizio Opalio on acoustic guitar, and Roberto Opalio on 'mini keyboard, bodhran, alientronics, and wordless vocalizations'. The trio's eclectic setup helps them create some truly luscious and mysterious music that is perfectly fragile, strange, distant and delicate. 'Mars Appears' is a hazy dream piece with layered guitars, strange electronics and Ramono's perfectly delivered Japanese vocals drawing the listener in surrounded by a strange but perfect fitting created by the Opalio brothers musical output. 'The Mountain' is equally as otherworldy as the previous sides track, with swirling strings and out of this world electronics created by Roberto and Maurizio. Whilst Ramona's vocal are almost delivered in a trance like state. A extremely beautiful record with a gorgeous organic feel to it. The record is housed in a sleeve featuring film photographs of flowers.
Edition of 250 copies pressed on 140gram virgin vinyl.

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>> LISTEN >>

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'ALIENOLOGY: Selected Works 1998-2008'
2011 - 10CD BOX (Elliptical Noise / Canada)
alphaomega6555-64CD

Stunning collection of works from 1998 to 2008, MY CAT IS AN ALIEN's first decade of adventure in outer space and modern music. All ultra-rare and long-out-of-print material from space brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio finally available for the first time in digital format, including a previously unreleased gem entitled 'Where The Lines Go To Sleep' (2004).
Starting from MY CAT IS AN ALIEN's 1999 first milestone 'Landscapes Of An Electric City' (originally spread throughout the world by Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace!), as asserted by Roberto Opalio in this excerpt from his original written introduction: "one day observing my polaroids of Torino we decided to devote to it an alien improvisation for only two guitars in order to represent the bare essence / sublimation of the metropolitan soul the way we feel it inside of us - [..] one morning we went around the city to record on tape 15 minutes of real sounds = the actual voice of the city and the next day under a dull and rainy sky we went into the studio to devastate and we seized our hollering guitars + we made mental contact with the aliens and boosted our amplifiers to the max while out of focus images of my alien slides were being projected on a wall - the result is all here on this disc where we feel the presence of Torino with its static electricity and the holler and hush which permeate from beginning to end every single shattered sound - [..] (October 1st, 1999)"
In these early years, MY CAT IS AN ALIEN decided to entrust thier own 'pictures of infinity' to several obscure labels specialized in producing limited as well as specially curated vinyl-only releases (not to mention the duo's own Opax Records imprint), thus creating a monumental corpus of work that gave birth to the brothers' myth. Though sometimes causing a bit of difficulty in finding these titles easily, on the other hand their choice made many vinyl-lovers and collectors' joy for sure.
Among many other fundamental works, this huge set also contains what MY CAT IS AN ALIEN have called 'The Great Void Trilogy', which was originally released on three separate LPs by Ed Hardy's legendary Eclipse Records in the middle of the last decade. The latest work presented in the set is 'Alien Blood' (2008), original soundtrack to the homonimous film by Roberto Opalio, which was shown at various European museums as part of the 'SONIC YOUTH etc: Sensational Fix' touring exhibition.
Each work has been accurately remastered and re-edited appositely for this box set release. The box also includes extensive liner notes, plus special art cards.
A unique occasion for every adventurous listener to experience some of the most inscrutable and essential music of all times.
Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

DISC 1 - 'Landscapes Of An Electric City'
DISC 2 - 'The Rest Is Silence' (part one)
DISC 3 - 'The Rest Is Silence' (part two - extended version)
DISC 4 - 'When The Windmill's Whirl Dies'
DISC 5 - 'There's A Flame___Sometimes'
DISC 6 - 'Into The White Vortex' / 'Where The Lines Go To Sleep' (previously unreleased)
DISC 7 - 'Greetings From The Great Void'
DISC 8 - 'The Secret Of The Dancing Snow'
DISC 9 - 'For The Tears Of The Land_Prayers From The Outer Space'
DISC 10 - 'Alien Blood - Soundtrack To The Film'

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VVAA - THE WIRE TAPPER # 25
2011 - magazine + CD comp (THE WIRE MAGAZINE, issue #326, April 2011)

The latest volume in THE WIRE magazine's series of experimental and underground music compilations featuring 20 new, rare or unreleased tracks from Hana, Artifact Shore, Nicholas Szczepanik, Tchicai/Hurley/Sanders/Coxon and more.

My Cat Is An Alien contribute:
The Antigravitational Sense Of Nothingness” (Wire Tapper alternate edit)

From 'What Space Is Made For' (Elliptical Noise)

Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio work in a “secret base in the Western Alps”, where they have been making instant compositions, electronic music and audio-visual art since 1997. This track comes from their latest magnum opus, a triple box set.

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>> view more
>> LISTEN >>

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'What Space Is Made For'
2011 - 3CD BOX (Elliptical Noise / Canada)
alphaomega6552-54CD

The monumental set 'What Space Is Made For' has been recorded in their secret base on the Western Alps, and unlike MCIAA's previous works, it's mostly made of short pieces and songs. In addition to their (un)usual instrumentation (electric and acoustic guitars, space toys, percussion), MCIAA have self-made, modified, and assembled / disassembled primitive electronic equipment. So the result may sound their most 'experimental' as well as their most 'accessible' work to date.

An alternate edit of the song 'The Antigravitational Sense Of Nothingness' is featured on the WIRE TAPPER 25 CD compilation, that comes attached to April 2011 issue of The Wire magazine.
The Box includes booklet with full liner notes, credits and an appositely written introduction to the work by Roberto Opalio, plus 6 full-color art cards.
Cover artwork - painting by Roberto Opalio.

"This triple box set is their latest magnum opus" - The Wire

>> Limited Art Edition of 20 copies

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>> LISTEN >>

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / PRAXINOSCOPE - 'For the tears of the Land_Prayers from the outer space'
2011 - 2CD (Elliptical Noise/ Canada)
alphaomega6543-44CD

Double CD set collecting the two single CDs.
Cardboard jacket with paste-on artwork. Includes liner notes and full introduction by Roberto Opalio.

Elliptical Noise is proud to present this ambitious two-disc concept album; disc 1 by cosmic brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio aka My Cat Is An Alien, and disc 2 by Praxinoscope, Roberto's side project with long-time collaborator Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Black Magic Disco, Ankoku).

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BBNU & MCIAA - 'GRAMOFONU = voice of the Universe'
2011 - LP (Opax Records / Love Nest / Czech Republic)
OPX034A/LN0003

Limited edition of 300 in pro-printed jackets, with exclusive cover art by Roberto Opalio. 90 copies come with an insert.

GRAMOFONU = voice of the Universe is the first meeting of two improvising acts, Prague-based turntable & 8mm band
Birds Build Nests Underground and Italian psychedelic trubadours My Cat Is An Alien. Two different approaches to music make a sound that takes both from the unknown realms of the outer space and from the somehow-well-known world of old cracking records and the music and sounds on them.
Birds Build Nests Underground provided some of their live improvisations, My Cat Is An Alien then chose those close to their hearts and laced them with sounds of guitars, space toys & ray guns, wordless singing and alientronics. Never has music of the spheres crackled so nicely. As if the whole galaxy lies on a giant turntable…
The record starts with an exciting, extatic and excellent improvised speech by a Czech avantgarde poet Vítezslav Nezval who sees the whole world through his glass and the glass in the window of a recording studio.

>> Limited Art Edition of 20 copies

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / RAMONA PONZINI / LEE RANALDO - 'All Is Lost In Translation'
2010 - CD (Atavistic, USA)
alp196CD

"Bella Italia avant garde meets Sonic-Youth guitar guru!
The Brothers Opalio return with their second collaborative album for Atavistic. This time
MY CAT IS AN ALIEN have teamed up with RAMONA PONZINI (vocals/Japanese percussion, and LEE RANALDO (guitars/bells/vocals) for a 2008 session, captured live in Verona, Italy. Like the extant MCIAA tapestry of international collaborations,
All Is Lost In Translation continues their spectacular latter-day exploration of the outer reaches, and further defines their well-earned role as alchemical auteur-artists." (label info)

Cover artwork - drawing by Roberto Opalio.

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AAVV - 'Música Salvaje Desde el Infinito Cosmos'
2010 - CD-R Comp (Buh Records / Perú)
BR15

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN
contribute 'Alien Beings'
Featuring Alan Courtis, Astro, Francisco Lòpez and more.

"Una compilación internacional que recoge el trabajo de 22 artistas de diversas partes del mundo, desde Perú hasta Japón, de Uruguay a España, de Italia a Costa Roca, de Nueva York a Argentina y de Canadá a la Luna. Todos importantes representantes de la experimentación sonora en la actualidad. El disco presenta exploraciones que van del noise psicodélico de guitarra, el industrial drone, y diversos acercamientos contemporáneos al sonido Kosmische. Rituales eternos de bulla sagrada. Sumamente intenso. Edición limitada de 300 copias en cdr. Portada de Athena Kargeui." Concepto y selección por Luis Alvarado. Arte de portada por Athena Kargeui.

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>> LISTEN >>

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Fragments suspended in time'
2010 - LP + CDr + Ltd. DVDr (Opax Records)
OPX 032A

Private Press Edition of 250 copies; multicolour vinyl housed in handmade heavy cardboard jacket with paste-on silver artwork, with 12" insert. A professionally pressed CDr is included as digital version of the album. A bonus DVDr region free containing a film by Roberto Opalio inspired by 'Fragments suspended in time - alba' comes with the first 100 copies.
Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

Second Edition: same multicolour vinyl housed in trifold cardboard jacket with paste-on silver artwork and insert. Digital Download coupon included.

"We're living our lives / like fragments / suspended in time" - Roberto Opalio

Perhaps Roberto's words are sufficient to explain the deep nature of the work. Anyway, it could be of a certain interest to know that this album comes after MCIAA spent a long period of self-isolation up in the Western Alps, far from everything and everyone but their own spirits.
Here the key is the development of melody and harmony; as quickly as you'll put the stylus on side A (called 'alba' = 'sunrise' side) you'll be overwhelmed by the delicate grace of its melodic texture, underlined by the intimate and never-before-so-sweet Roberto's wordless vocalizations.
Side B (called 'tramonto' = 'sunset' side) will increase more and more this antigravitational sweet mood, 'till you'll find yourself literally 'suspended in time'... For those who loved MCIAA's The Rest Is Silence masterpiece, this album is intended to be a great step in that direction as well as a great step beyond it. A final recommendation directly by the duo: "To you who follow the so-called 'avant metal' shit, to you who are slave of the trends of the moment, to you who think experimental music must be soulless, to you who consider music only as a mere entertainment while doing 'more important' things, to you who believe art is not poetry, please DON'T buy this LP! You won't like it the same way we don't like you!"

>> Limited Art Edition of 20 copies

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & BJERGA / IVERSEN - collab LP
2010 - LP (Gold Soundz / Ikuisuus) (LTD. 250 + special ed. bonus DVD-R)
GS#98 / IKU-025

"2 psyched-out sides from the mighty Aliens and Norways own answer to Hall & Oates - Bjerga/Iversen. These sides are boiled down from about 2+ hours worth of material recorded last summer in the stunning alpine village of Luserna san Giovanni, just outside of Torino, Italy.
Space electronics, weightless freestyle strings, buzzing voices from the outer heliospheres and garbled and warped messages from the great beyond handed down on recycled trashcan tapes.... celestial harmonies from a neon universe...
There was a double-exposed rainbow over the foot of the western alps this evening in late June, and you can hear the colors seeping through the cracks...
Both My Cat is an Alien and Bjerga/Iversen have extensive discographies and both units have collaborated a lot with others, as this is an important part of our musical universes. So we were all happy to work on these recordings together in a full-blown extensive and focused session.... The recordings are edited by MCIAA."

Edition of 250 copies in ultra-cool neon-colored silkscreened jackets, 5 different varieties.
Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.
** Special edition of 30 with a BONUS DVDR with extra video material **

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>> read reviews

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Photoelectric Season'
2010 - 2CD (Elliptical Noise)
alphaomega6549-50CD

"After a period of mystic retreat in a remote region of the Western Alps, MCIAA return with a brand new double album, one of their most innovative and mysterious to date. During six months of physical and psychic isolation, the Opalio brothers's unique plays have been Giacinto Scelsi, Erik Satie and Maki Asakawa, while they have chosen as their sole mates writers August Strindberg and Isidore Ducasse compte de Lautréamont. Few words can describe this new milestone in MCIAA's whole discography: archaic, arcane, psychically alienated, heartfelt. These are their new 'cosmic tones for mental therapy'. Gatefold cardboard jacket with tape binding and paste-on artwork, with insert.
Roberto Opalio: vocals, mini-keyboard, alientronix.
Maurizio Opalio: electric & acoustic guitars, ancient zither."

Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

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>> read reviews

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Black Shadows from Jupiter, Vol. I & II'
2010 - 2CD (Elliptical Noise / Canada)
alphaomega6547-48CD

"Double CD featuring the previously unreleased 'stereo version' of Volume One, plus an entire second disc of new material presented here as Volume Two. 'Black Shadows from Jupiter, Volume I' was indeed issued in 2005 as one of the legendary and ultra-rare, private vinyl editions by Opalio brothers' own Opax Records imprint, pressed in 120 copies in 'Monalien Fidelity' - a clear reference/tribute to ESP's incredible 'monaural' sound recordings. Volume One consists of two long tracks, the very first music recorded by MCIAA after they moved to the new recording space located in the Western Alps, as well as the first experiments in Roberto Opalio's personal technique in the use of wordless vocals as a powerful musical instrument, which has since become one of the most original and distinctive elements of MCIAA's music, and that here can't but recall Tim Buckley's 'Starsailor' mood. Five years later, in October 2009, MCIAA decide to record almost one hour of completely new material to represent the follow-up, 'Black Shadows from Jupiter, Volume II', here all featured in Disc 2. The whole set represents the opportunity of a unique journey in the darkest secrets of the S-System."

Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

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>> read reviews

ROBERTO OPALIO - 'The Hexagram on Grace'
2010 - CD (Elliptical Noise)
alphaomega6551CD

"Third soloist album by Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien, Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Praxinoscope). During the same period of self isolation in the Westrn Alps that brought to life MCIAA's 'Photoelectric Season' double album, Roberto conceived the creation of his new full-lenght album, inspired by the mystic aura of the nature surrounding himself. Focusing himself on his peculiar wordless vocalizations, and using simply a mini-keyboard and his prepared 'alientronics' as instruments, Roberto has built soundscapes of sublime abstract expressionism around the 'heliocentricity' of his voice. This is a true 'hexagram on grace' indeed. Cardboard jacket with paste-on artwork, with insert.
Roberto Opalio: vocals, mini-keyboard, alientronix. Featuring Maurizio Opalio on acoustic guitar at the beginning of 'Like an empty glass'"

Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

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MAURIZIO & ROBERTO OPALIO - 'Liquid Spring'
2009 - CD (Eliiptical Noise / Canada)
alphaomega6546CD

Amazing work of quiet contemplation on acoustic & classical guitars by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien), with Roberto's disembodied vocals levitating high above like a cosmic breath.

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LE VOCI DEL BUIO - 'Le Voci Del Buio'
2009 - CD (Elliptical Noise)
alphaomega6545CD

This is the rare document of a late-night session set up by Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (Praxinoscope, Painting Petals On Planet Ghost), featuring an obscure ensemble of radical folk musicians of the Western Alps. The instrument that have been played in this album range from classical & acoustic guitars to early 1800s homemade wooden string instruments, belonging to the rural tradition of the region.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'For the tears of the Land_Prayers from the outer space - Vol.1'
2009 - CD (Elliptical Noise / Canada)
alphaomega6543CD

PRAXINOSCOPE - 'For the tears of the Land_Prayers from the outer space - Vol.2'
2009 - CD (Elliptical Noise)
alphaomega6544CD

Elliptical Noise is proud to present this ambitious two-volume concept album; Vol.1 by cosmic brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio aka My Cat Is An Alien, and Vol.2 by Praxinoscope, Roberto's side project with long-time collaborator Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Black Magic Disco, Z'ev). Here the introduction to both CDs by Roberto himself: "This work shows an apparently new side of My Cat Is An Alien, but be careful not to be deceived. I just believe that what was already inborn appeared more vivid and explicit at a certain point. One day we realized it was no more possible to discern archaic art and post-modern art in our palette; it was clear that they were both reflected in the same hall of mirrors, which our whole aesthetics has always been inclined to, continuosly escaping from and returning to it, everytime re-confirming its own essence. In other words, alien art and archaic art are the same thing. Volume 1 starts with an acoustic blues performed by myself, dedicated to the pioneers of the American primitive music and in particular to the spirit of Charley Patton, which was psychically obsessing me at the moment of creation - Charley, this is for you! - And Volume 2 ends with a Praxinoscope's piece of total cosmic blast... and of archaic transcendence. In fact all archaic art deals with death, sex, transcendence and Eternity. Anyone who does not look from this perspective cannot understand and appreciate contemporary art, even less pretend to use the term 'avant-garde' without exposing oneself to ridicule. We're all living days suspended in the Void. The difference is in consciousness: this is real artists' duty. Beyond and other than this, only oblivion." (Roberto Opalio - May 18th, 2007).

Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

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MOONMILK / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - "Paseridae I"
2009 - split 7" (Sound & Fury)
(Ltd. 100 in pale blue vinyl / Ltd. 200 in black; hand-silkscreened, 100% recycled chipboard sleeves)

The first volume in a new series of split 7" singles on Australia's Sound & Fury label, featuring new and exclusive tracks from Sydney drone duo Moonmilk & space travellers My Cat Is An Alien. The whole series, pairing Astralian artists with oversea ones features BROTHERS OF THE OCCULT SISTERHOOD, STARVING WEIRDOS, SCISSOR LOCK, JASPER TX, ADRIAN KLUMPES, MACHINEFABRIEK, HEIL SPIRITS, THE NORTH SEA, SEAWORTHY, TARENTEL, ZELIENOPLE, SHOEB AHMAHD, LIBRARY TAPES, M.RÖSNER, ANTONY MILTON, ANONYMEYE, THURSTON MOORE

My Cat Is An Alien play 'diatomic molecules' (4:30)
Moonmilk play 'my mother in colours' (4:36)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN, MICHAEL MORLEY, RAMONA PONZINI, LEE RANALDO - 'Live @ Sensational Fix'
2009 - LP (Starlight Furniture Co.)
ST25

On June 17, 2008, the exhibition Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix opened at LiFE in Saint-Nazaire, France. As part of the exhibition project, My Cat Is An Alien performed on stage with their long-time collaborator Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Black Magic Disco, Z'ev) singing Japanese, Michael Morley (Dead C, Gate) and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth.
Side B features a collection of solo pieces by each of the five members of this extemporaneous ensemble. The perfect compendium to the unicity of this historical document. (Starlight)

Cover art - polaroid photos by Roberto Opalio, form his "On-Stage Live Action Series".

Exhibition curator Roland Groenenboom recalls: "Michael Morley joined My Cat Is An Alien and Ramona Ponzini on stage for an improv piece. They were already way into developing it when, to their surprise, Lee Ranaldo picked up the guitar that Maurizio had left lying on stage when he moved on to playing percussion, which only made the already phenomenal sonic achievement even denser." >> read more

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>>read reviews here

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST - 'Haru no omoi'
2009 - CD (PSF Records / Japan)
PSFD-190

"Ramona Ponzini, young vocalist of Italian PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST, marvellously gave new life to the precious soul of Japan - the soul that contemporary Japan has lost these days." PSF Records - Tokyo

Haru No Omoi is the third full length release from Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, the project of My Cat Is An Alien's Maurizio and Roberto Opalio featuring Ramona Ponzini (Black Magic Disco, Praxinoscope) on vocals. The MCIAA duo provide expertly restrained accompaniment with guitar, keyboard, and percussion of the spacious gong/cymbal/bell variety to create a minimalist realm for Ponzini's Japanese singing and spoken word that is all together captivating. This is an album of sparse, hypnotic folk and subtle drone, but it inhabits a galaxy containing a warmth and richness in detail quite unlike anything else the Opalios have laid their hands on. Track two, 'Sakura No Hana No Oto Ga Kikoeru,' is a variation (or maybe the same exact version?) of the same song featured on the band's stunning 2005 self-titled debut release on Time-Lag. Housed in a heavy mini-gatefold sleeve. "Every track recorded in a different mystic location of the Western Alps, Piedmont, Italy between winter 2004, early fall 2006 and January 2009."
Selection of all tracks by Hideo Ikeezumi of PSF Records, Tokyo.

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>> read reviews here

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - Mort Aux Vaches
2009 - CD (Staalplaat)
AV061CD

On December 14th, 2006 MCIAA recorded a private performance at the historical Holland VPRO radio; invited by director Berry Kamer at the Studio Desmet in Amsterdam for the program Dwars@Vpro, MCIAA performed live three 'instant compositions'. The whole recording session here presented has been recorded and produced by Berry Kamer; on stage the Opalio brothers played electric guitars, space guns, toy microphone, piano toy, mini-xylophone, alientronics and percussions. CD comes in 3-panel gatefold plastic sleeve, with amazing lenticular cover artwork by Erik Kriek (concept by Staalplaat). Ltd. 500 copies.

"Despite its utterly mystifying and goofy lenticular packaging, My Cat Is An Alien’s contribution to Staalplaat’s long-running studio session series is a very focused, formidable, and often incendiary affair. The Opalio brothers have a refreshingly unique and calculated aesthetic that more closely resembles an inspired evolution of free jazz than anything being done by their peers in the noise underground." (BRAINWASHED - USA)

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VVAA - DREAM MAGAZINE - issue #9
2009 - magazine + CD comp (Dream Magazine / USA)

128 page Dream Magazine #9 features an article on PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST by editor George Parsons, with an extended interview to Ramona Ponzini and the Opalio brothers talking about their project as well as ghosts, dreams and more.
Furthermore, PPOPG contributed an exclusive and previously unreleased track to the magazine CD comp, entitled 'Haru no kuni' ('Land of Spring').

Other features include Glenn Branca, Sky Sunlight Saxon of The Seeds and YaHoWha 13, Bird By Snow, Scott Tuma, Helena Espvall, Phantom Buffalo, Andria Degens aka Pantaleimon, Brother JT, Boyd Rice, and David Thomas of Pere Ubu.

#9’s CD features exclusive tracks by: John White, Anvil Salute, Daddy Antogna, Bird By Snow, Mt. Eerie, Helena Espvall and Mori-Shige Yasumune, Pantaleimon, Christian Jonassen, Bob Moss, Casual Fog, Brasil & the Gallowbrothers Band, Sarah June, Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, M. Jarvis / A. Jarvis, Corbi Wright, and more.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & ENORE ZAFFIRI - 'Through The Magnifying Glass Of Tomorrow'
2009 - CD+DVD set (Atavistic / USA)
ALP189

"Clandestine auteurs the Opalio Brothers (AKA My Cat Is An Alien) have deftly sprinkled our solar system with their beautifully fragile,arcane soundscape/tracks via their own OPAX label.
Atavistic is most definitely thrilled to have the pleasure of releasing 'Through the magnifying glass of tomorrow', a freshly-minted collaboration with one of the pioneers of radical Italian electronic music, ENORE ZAFFIRI.

Mr. Zaffiri, composer and founder of the legendary SMET (Studio di Musica Elettronica di Torino) in 1964, is 80 years old and has been a "reclused" artist for decades. After meeting Maurizio and Roberto, he decided to set up a collaborative project with them. Their recordings from the Western Alps of Bella Italia, 'Through the magnifying glass of tomorrow', a CD+DVD release running over two hours, is the haunting result from the gathering of these fellow musical cosmonauts." (Atavistic)

>The CD contains MCIAA's collaborative studio session with Mr.Zaffiri
>The DVD disc contains 2 long films:
Light_Earth_Blue_Silver | dual film by Roberto Opalio, soundtrack by MCIAA. 2008 / 37 minutes / 4:3 / color / stereo
Trasparenze | video painting and music by Enore Zaffiri. Revised 2008 / 48 minutes / 4:3 / color / stereo

Light_Earth_Blue_Silver is a dual film by Roberto Opalio, shot in 8mm cassette in January 2005 in a remote location of Italy's western Alps. A first version, with different editing, was screened in April 2005 at The Sage Gateshead, Newcastle UK during a My Cat Is An Alien's live performance. A final editing was made in 2008, adding an original soundtrack by My Cat Is An Alien.

For the film Roberto Opalio made a two-meters-tall alien figure in iron wire, one of the main features inhabiting his own artistic imaginary, and symbol of the transfiguration of the existential vision of the last human being on Earth. The Alien is the character of Light_Earth_Blue_Silver.
This film shows the Alien's physical and existential voyage along a mountain track, where snow, rocks, white birches and pinetrees mark out its way to heaven. As all Opalio's works, the film has different levels of interpretation.

>>read reviews here

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / PESTREPELLER
2009 - split picture disc LP (A Silent Place)
ASP31

SIDE ONE: My Cat Is An Alien “Solar Anarchy” - Recorded live in Cologne, Germany - December 14th, 2006.
Artwork - painting by Roberto Opalio

SIDE A: Pestrepeller “As Wolf” - Recorded by Toby Robinson in his London studio, August 2006.
Artwork by Savage Pencil

My Cat Is An Alien are the brothers Roberto and Maurizio Opalio, who have been spreading their unique brand of mysterious guitarnoise improv across the globe for ten years. Drawing inspiration from cosmic giants such as Sun Ra, My Cat Is An Alien christened their home rehearsal / performance area in Torino as 'The Space Room', and recorded numerous symbolic explorations of the outer galaxies.

Roberto Opalio's creative arts skills have, from the start, been harnessed to realising the visual components of their outer space metaphor, using photography and films; he also executes numerous paintings, sometimes for the benefit of limited-edition art-object records issued on their own OPAX label. Roberto returns obsessively to rendering his striking vision of an attenuated alien figure with its huge lone eye.

Pestrepeller are a band of part-time musicians from the UK. The core trio is Harley Richardson, Ed Pinsent and Savage Pencil. Richardson is a mathematics and computer expert who made a late and sudden conversion to free improvised noise; Ed Pinsent (who plays organ and Moog) is the editor of The Sound Projector Music Magazine and presenter of a radio show of the same name; Savage Pencil, is the only core member with any history of playing in bands, through his association as singer with The Art Attacks and Tagmemics, and guitarist in The Kray Cherubs.

Savage Pencil, well famous cult underground cartoonist, in his almost-30-years career made artworks for several bands (Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo, The Fall, Big Black, Masonna, etc.), labels (Sympathy For The Record Industry, SST, Blast First, Beggars Banquet, etc,.), and strips for music magazines (NME, Sound Magazine, The Wire, Mojo,etc.)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / MATS GUSTAFSSON - 'Cosmic Debris, Vol.IV'
2009 - split CD (A Silent Place)
ASP33

CD re-issue of the fourth volume in the ongoing "Cosmic Debris" series of split ART-LP releases set up by the Opalio brothers, aka MY CAT IS AN ALIEN (MCIAA), on their own Opax Records. This time the space improv duo from Torino, Italy, shares one side of the vinyl with Swedish radical saxophonist MATS GUSTAFSSON, whose twenty-year career boasts collaborations that range widely over the contemporary improvised music world, from masters of the free jazz such as Peter Brotzmann, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, to famous members of the noise scene such as Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Yoshimi & Yamataka Eye among others. In every personal message exchange between MCIAA and Gustafsson, their own respective 'ALIEN FAITH!' & 'PEACE & FIRE!' mottos always occur, often combined by the artists themselves into new formulae & meanings: 'ALIEN FIRE!' / 'PEACE & FAITH!' / 'ALIEN PEACE!' / 'FAITH & FIRE!'. Needless to say dear gents, this is not a joke, yet each of these words' combination assumes a deep rule in describing this new exciting adventure in the 'Cosmic Debris' saga. In fact both artists' tracks represent an exemplary encounter between open-minded artists, resolute in creating something to go beyond limits and their own goals too, looking for something truly alive and free: 'Peace & Fire!' and 'Alien Faith!' indeed.
In his track 'I Have Not Set Any Time Limits For The Attempt' Mats Gustafsson plays tenor and slide sax, weevil sax, and electronics. In MCIAA's 'Everything Burns Like Cosmic Debris' the space brothers play astral and cosmic guitars, vocals, mouth harmonica, space toys and burning percussions.
The five-volumes series "Cosmic Debris" features My Cat Is An Alien alongside Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino, Mats Gustafsson, Loren Connors & his Haunted House band.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'For the tears of the Land_Prayers from the outer space'
2009 - 2xLP (Important Records / USA)
imprec217LP

Ltd. 300 hand numbered copies packaged in heavy duty screen printed metallic ink jackets.
Cover artwork - drawing by Roberto Opalio.

My Cat Is An Alien's new surprising master work is a concept-album split with their side project Praxinoscope. As always, in a world full of compromises, MCIAA represent fierce independence and complete freedom. Take Roberto's own words in the liner notes as the best introduction to this work: "One day we realized it was no more possible to discern archaic art and post-modern art in our palette; it was clear that they were both reflected in the same hall of mirrors. In other words, alien art and archaic art are the same thing. All archaic art deals with death, sex, transcendence and Eternity. We're all living days suspended in the Void. The difference is in consciousness: this is real artists' duty. Beyond and other than this, only oblivion."

 

**MY CAT IS AN ALIEN present their own PRIVATE ARTISTS' EDITION of 9 copies!:

the two vinyls come housed in a 13"x13" early-Folkways-style gatefold jacket, handmade in ultra-heavy cardboard covered with brown similar leather by Maurizio Opalio; same Roberto Opalio's silkscreened drawing pasted on cover. Inner gatefold features pasted inserts with typewritten full liner notes plus Roberto's entire original writing 'censored' by Important. Handwritten labels in golden ink by Roberto. Old paper inner sleeves.

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ROBERTO OPALIO / MAURIZIO OPALIO - 'In the Middle of the Air / Glacier Sommeiller'
2009 - split LP (Important Records / USA)
imprec216LP

Ltd. 300 copies packaged in heavy duty screenprinted jackets

Each side features a 20-minute solo track from both brotherly halves of the acclaimed My Cat Is An Alien. Roberto Opalio's track 'In the Middle of the Air' is built on his unique wordless vocals style, here in transcendental mood and accompanied by an old zither and a pocket toy-keyboard, creating a crescendo that sounds like a holy tibetan chant affected by the music of the Spheres. On the flip side, Maurizio Opalio provides a long acoustic guitar mantra-piece of peaceful minimalism that will bring warmth to your ears, mind & body; the track has been recorded in the heart of the Western Alps, with birds accompanying the tune.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - '8inch triangular lathe cut record'
2008 - 8" triangular lathe cut record (Pseudoarcana / New Zealand)

Limited numbered edition of 80 triangle records in specially designed triangular cardboard jackets, with artwork by Roberto Opalio silkscreened on cover and golden/red inner foil.

"I have long been in awe of the superior control of musical cosmonauts Roberto and Maurizio Opalio. The grace and simplicity of their touch.
I feel that it is a privilege to able to introduce this new work, 2 short sides etched into a triangle of acetate that illustrate the potentially eternal depth of the subjectively experienced universe.
This record is far less electr(on)ic than some of their pieces. Driven largely by plaintive bell like guitar and a sparse haunting ethereal wordless vocal it sounds like a prayer sung in a chamber deep within some dark crystalline moon."
(A.M./ Pseudoarcana)

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PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST / MYKEL BOYD
2008 - split 7" (Somnimage)

standard edition (limited to 200 copies) 7" on white vinyl in opaque wrap-over sleeve.

artist edition (limited to 50 copies) includes two unique Polaroid photos, one from Ramona Ponzini (taken in Japan)and one from Mykel Boyd (taken in Illinois, USA), both signed.

PPOPG is Ramona Ponzini and the Opalio Brothers from My Cat is an Alien. They bring the mellow on their side with a piece entitled 'I lose consciousness', with a sweet acoustic guitar intro and a mantra of Japanese chant and wind chimes, all floating over field recordings from the gardens of Kanazawa, Japan.
Mykel Boyd's side consists of processed field recordings creating a very nice ride for those with a ticket.

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PRAXINOSCOPE - 'Untitled #6'
2008 - 1-sided C20 cassette (Opax Records)
OPX 031C

Limited edition of 36 copies in special plastic handmade packaging, with cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

New ultra-limited cassette from the obscure project of Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Z'ev), featuring a previously unreleased 10-minute late-night-mantra piece made of Opalio's hypnotic vocalising along with Ponzini's Japanese mystic percussions.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Alien Blood'
2008 - LP (Opax Records)
OPX 030A

"Original soundtrack from Roberto Opalio's film 'Alien Blood' (2005-2008), currently shown at SONIC YOUTH etc.: SENSATIONAL FIX museum exhibition, opened at LiFE museum (France) in June 2008, and already scheduled around the globe for the next couple of years. The improvised score by My Cat Is An Alien follows the minimal and surrealistic beginning of the film with sparse echoes of eerie sounds, growing in dark timbres and pathos. Maurizio Opalio's heavily effected 'blood percussions' compress the air, while Roberto's wordless vocals, along with his space toys, alientronics & mini-keyboard are on the razor-edge of another dimension. The finale comes as one of the most epic crescendos ever performed by the Italian duo. One of the most impressive and innovative MCIAA's recordings to date.
Cover artwork- stills from Roberto Opalio's film 'Alien Blood'.

>> Limited Art Edition of 20 copies

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / LOREN CONNORS & his HAUNTED HOUSE band - 'Cosmic Debris, Vol.V'
2008 - split ART-LP (Opax Records) (art edition of 100)
OPX LP12

Each record comes with an original acrylic painting by Roberto Opalio on 30x30cm proper canvas, with a unique Polaroid instant film installed on each piece, representing 100 different perspectives of a same subject related to My Cat Is An Alien's own cosmic imaginary.

"The fifth and final volume in the "Cosmic Debris" series of split ART-LP releases set up by the Opalio brothers, aka MY CAT IS AN ALIEN (MCIAA), on their own Opax Records, ends up at its best with the space duo sharing the vinyl surface with the legendary avant-blues guitarist Loren M. Connors. Connors, who can be considered as the last real bluesman on earth, has the rare ability to turn single guitar chords into pure poetry, and don't you think we all need more of that in these dark days? The two tracks collected here, 'Improv' and 'Thomas Paine', furthermore represent a true rarity, since they both document his now-defunct project named Haunted House, featuring his wife Suzanne Langille, Andrew Burnes and Neel Murgai, and whose discography sees only one cd and few private ultra-limited cd-r editions on Connors' own Black Label imprint. Despite these scarse documentation of the group's activity, estimators firmly believe that with this project Connors achieved some of the highlights of his entire career, and these two previously unreleased tracks can't but confirm this theory. On the other side of the vinyl, the title of MCIAA's piece, 'Everything tears like cosmic debris', speaks by itself, as it seals with a deep affecting conclusion the whole concept behind this remarkable series of art manufacts and collaborations. In the silence of the Great Void, sparse melancholic guitar chords and eerie vocalising build up an astral chant to celebrate the end and the beginning of a new season.

The five-volumes series "Cosmic Debris" features My Cat Is An Alien alongside Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino, Mats Gustafsson, Loren Connors & his Haunted House band.

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BLACK MAGIC DISCO - 's/t' 
2008 - ART-LP BOX Set (A Silent Place)

special ultra-limited box set in 20 copies, containing:
- Black Magic Disco 's/t' 2xLP (ASP27);
- exclusive collaborative original painting by Roberto Opalio & Tom Greenwood on 12"x24" special paper, individually numbered and signed by both artists;
- BMD full-color poster 40x60cm;

The box is made on red plexiglass with silk-screened artwork on front and is limited to 20 copies only
Black Magic Disco logo by Roberto Opalio.

(read reviews here)

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(read reviews here)

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST - 'Fallen Camellias'
2008 - CD (A Silent Place) (3-panel digipack)
ASP35

Second full-lenght album from Italy's Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, aka brothers Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and vocalist Ramona Ponzini (also involved in the duo Praxinoscope, as well as a new project with Z'ev). 'Fallen Camellias' is a tribute to one of the greatest poetess ever, Japanese Yosano Akiko, whose work in literature in the early 1900's is considered as manifesto of the Japanese Romanticism. Imagine a Vashti Bunyan or a early Marianne Faithful singing sweet melodies in Japanese language, and you can have an idea of the musical and poetical universe of Painting Petals On Planet Ghost. Here Ramona Ponzini's singing comes from the use of Akiko's selected original poems in Japanese along with Ponzini's own typical soft and enchanting wordless vocals style, a out of time muse-like chant hypnotizing the ears and the minds of the listeners. The songs of 'Fallen Camellias' are built on acoustic guitar melodies composed by Maurizio Opalio, and are made of the same pure, melancholic essentiality of the legendary Nick Drake; while, after contributing arrangements of the most ecstatic nature, the other brother Roberto Opalio has played the role of producer of the whole album, searching for not only an aesthetic, but especially an emotional ideal of perfection. In the heart of winter covered by snow, let 'Fallen Camellias' be your warm blanket, as well as the promise of a new future spring. Here's a special Painting Petals On Planet Ghost's dedication: 'For those who drink the wine of love springtime is forever'.

>> Limited Art Edition of 9 copies

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Sotto le Stelle'
2008 - etched LP (Lost Treasures of the Underworld)

Ltd. edition of 100; purple vinyl with etching by Roberto Opalio on one side; 3 color screen-printed covers
Cover artwork by Roberto Opalio.

In summer 2007 MCIAA were invited by Sonic Youth to tour with them in Northern Italy; "Sotto le Stelle" is a long excerpt from the recording of their shocking live performance at the Ferrara Sotto Le Stelle festival, which takes place every year in the main square of the historical city centre, right in front of the wonderful medieval Estense Castle. On the flipside Roberto Opalio's first ever vinyl etching, as well as his exclusive cover artwork, made in three color screen-printing by Jared Phillips (from the band T/N/V) and the Self Esteem studios in Columbus, Ohio, hometown of the newly-born label Lost Treasures of the Underworld.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / VALERIO COSI - 'Stories From The Vacuum'
2008 - split 7" (Black Horizon) (limited to 500 in clear vinyl; gold ink offset printing on metallic vellum)
BH-16

A truly ethereal pairing from Italy. While MCIAA has already established a massive offering in all formats, this 7"is Valerio's first vinyl appearance proper. His side is dominated by free jazz sax loops and trance vocals, with moments of twinkling percussion and electronic euphoria. An amalgamation of improv styles pulled off in a way only Valerio can. On the flip is a beautiful example of the lush guitar ambiance, wordless vocals, and alien space toy sound effects that the Opalio brothers are known for.

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN play "Blue Beings"

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(read reviews here)

BLACK MAGIC DISCO - 's/t'
2007 - 2xLP (A Silent Place/ Italy) (ltd. 500! deluxe 2-color vinyl version of the debut CD on Important Records; gatefold full color jacket + poster)
ASP27

"Black Magic Disco is the new all-star band featuring Tom Greenwood (Jackie-O Motherfucker), Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Praxinoscope).
The project was born out of an idea from Tom Greenwood, founder leader of the avant-folk-blues ensemble JOMF, who invited Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka the Italian improv duo My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA), and their close collaborator Ramona Ponzini (also involved with the two brothers in the projects named Painting Petals On Planet Ghost and Praxinoscope, as well as in the new collaboration with Z'ev) to perform with him for two months of touring throughout all Europe in May/ June 2005.
As one can imagine, the result was killer. The music which came out of the live performances was totally explosive, combining Ramona's Japanese vocals & hypnotic chimes with Greenwood's psych-blues guitar attitude & wild turntablism, over MCIAA's alien cosmic flux of electric guitars, space toys & percussions, creating a still unheard mixture of sounds unifying archaic & post-modern, western & eastern, sky & earth.
This debut CD represents a unique chance to experience almost 80 minutes of that pure and magic live action, divided in four long tracks taken from the original live recordings.
BLACK MAGIC DISCO's logo comes from the pencil of Roberto Opalio; the gatefold jacket CD artwork, curated by MCIAA contains some band photos taken during the live performances included in the record." (Important)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / KEIJI HAINO - 'Cosmic Debris, Vol.III'
2007 - split CD (A Silent Place)
ASP28

"CD re-issue of the third installment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. The Vol.III sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Japanese cult musician and dark shaman Keiji Haino. Imagine a cosmic bomb exploding in your brain, and you'll have an approximate idea of this collaborative release. So, dear new-weird-america's hippy, you'd better keep your ass away from this total blast!.. no freak-folk here. Instead, with these two long tracks recorded during live performances in their hometowns, respectively Torino and Tokyo, MCIAA and Haino conspired to offer you the two most totally-uncompromising music, the best way to warm up your cold winter days: what do you want more?
Haino's track, entitled "Whither goes it?/ That which canst not but be described/ As my prayer,/ Nowhere held in common,/ Lunatic, unknowable..." (yes, it's a poem!), is one of the highlights of his so long career, and MCIAA's track "Everything crashes like cosmic debris" is one of the brothers' most ass-kicking for sure... Still ask for more? Ok, read the note and play this record at loudest volume, 'till your stereo calls for mercy. Are you satisfied, now? Oh yes, we think so... 'dark' + 'alien' are so cool together!
The five-volumes series "Cosmic Debris" features My Cat Is An Alien alongside Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino, Mats Gustafsson, Loren Connors & his Haunted House band.
Each CD cover artwork reproduces the full image and details of the acrylic paintings created by Roberto Opalio for each copy of the original vinyl edition on MCIAA's own Opax Records."

(read reviews here)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / STEVE RODEN - 'Cosmic Debris, Vol.II'
2007 - split CD (A Silent Place)
ASP23

"CD reissue of the second installment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. The Vol.II sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Californian visual and sound artist Steve Roden. What makes this collaborative release so peculiar is the natural interactive exchange occurred between the artists, and that came out from the concept behind the experience itself.
Roden's contribution thus represents the unique experience of hearing him literally 'playing' guitar chords. His first track, "E-bows and Rainbows", developes through the minimal and reiterated sound architecture of Roden's so-called 'possible landscapes', where singular source materials such as objects and field recordings are abstracted through electronic processes to generate new audio spaces, characterizing the artist's aesthetic in sound works; the following "My dog is a Yufo" is so far a pretty unheard aspect of Roden's ability to shape a fascinating intimate piece only with an old electric guitar and his own fingers, and it also demonstrates how a true artist can re-create his own personal universe, no matter what kind of source utilized.
On their side, MCIAA deliver another piece of 'cosmic debris', centered on multilayered echoes of voice, toy piano, space drones raising from a distant horizon, and their own physical gestures performed during the recording, which reproduce themselves through the air, re-play and give birth to echoes of real time that overcomes its own essence, becoming field recording itself, mirror and spectre of its immutability. Their track entitled "Everything waves like cosmic debris" also features Ramona Ponzini's Japanese bells contribution.
The five-volumes series "Cosmic Debris" features My Cat Is An Alien alongside Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino, Mats Gustafsson, Loren Connors & his Haunted House band.
Each CD cover artwork reproduces the full image and details of the acrylic paintings created by Roberto Opalio for each copy of the original vinyl edition on MCIAA's own Opax Records."

(read reviews here)

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MUSIC FOR PHANTOMS - 's/t'
2007 - CD-R + DVD-R set (Opax Records) (private edition of 99 handnumbered copies; in heavy cardboard with pasted on artwork)
OPX 027/V

"New project by Italian space-brothers improv duo My Cat Is An Alien, recorded in remote Western Alps in fall 2007. Forget all the space psychedelic textures... forget all sort of space toys... this is a totally different affair: this is haunted music created with wooden primitive instruments, distant echoes from the other dimension. A pagan ceremony to welcome winter. Stunning film by Roberto Opalio to introduce you to the reign of the phantoms."

Cover artwork - b/w film photograph by Roberto Opalio.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - "speak, alien, SPEAK!"
2007 - 3x C20 cassette set (Opax Records) (private edition of 60 handnumbered copies; in heavy cardboard with pasted on artwork)
OPX 026C

"Entire session of one of the latest MCIAA's live killer performances, recorded at Feedback Festival in Dijon on September 29th, 2007. Split over 6 sides of C20 analog tape cassettes, the duo's performance couldn't but draw inspiration by the name of the event, launching a massive attack of feedbacks from the highest spheres."

Cover artwork - drawing by Roberto Opalio.

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>> read reviews

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST - 's/t'
2007 - CD (Time-Lag Records / USA) (CD reissue of the out of print debut LP; lushly packaged in a mini version of the original lp packaging, with letterpress printed tri-fold cover. printed with copper ink on exquisite & massively thick handmade ivory art paper, each sheet cast one at a time & air dried)
TIME-LAG 030

"Digital version of the out of print lp... debut recording from Italy's Opalio brothers (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini. An esoteric and mesmerizing trip through space, minimalism, and emotion. Each track recorded at a different mystical location in the Western Alps, and centered around Ramona's beautiful vocals, all of which are sung in traditional japanese. Maurizio & Roberto add sparse accompaniment by means of toy piano, alien keyboard tones, antique accordion, percussion, tape effects, and some particularly evocative acoustic guitar. The whole thing comes off alternately as deeply meditative or chillingly haunted, depending on your attention & mood. Silence, space & ritual are hugely important here, with notes & words hovering frozen in time... while the My Cat Is An Alien moniker might leave some folks scratching their heads, here the Painting Petals On Planet Ghost name nails it : fragile, beautiful, cosmically isolationist, and totally spooked..."

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>>read reviews

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Il Segno'
2007 - CD (Starlight Furniture Co./ Revolver USA)
*20

(expanded CD reissue, with clear reflective spot varnish packaging)

"My Cat Is An Alien entered The Space Room in October 2000 and recorded a dark and concrete improvisation; previously released on LP, stretched over two sides of vinyl, it is restored here to its original state as a 30-minute monolith of caustic ruination. Beginning with a gloomy text entitled "The Sign" written by guitarist / lyricist Roberto Opalio, the track comes out of the smog with brother Maurizio's desolate, acoustic guitar scratches, Roberto's electric space guitar scribbles and spat-out words of urban alienation, and Viggiu Vortex on percussion. Piano toy and toy keyboard were added later to enhance the surreal lyrics inspired by ghosts, a sense of psychic, cultural and social isolation in their hometown Torino, Italy, and the infinite lightness and beauty between the cement and the sky. Il Segno is about the mark of chance, avenues full of dust and fallen leaves, the Torino skyline's abandoned factories and chimneys with the mountains all around, and the dance of swallows at twilight, just before the darkness envelops everything. This CD reissue also has 23 minutes of extra screech-- a pair of previously unreleased tracks recorded during the same sessions."

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read reviews here)

BLACK MAGIC DISCO - 's/t'
2007 - CD (Important Records / USA) (gatefold full-color cardboard jacket)
imprec148

"Black Magic Disco is the new all-star band featuring Tom Greenwood (Jackie-O Motherfucker), Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Praxinoscope).
The project was born out of an idea from Tom Greenwood, founder leader of the avant-folk-blues ensemble JOMF, who invited Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka the Italian improv duo My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA), and their close collaborator Ramona Ponzini (also involved with the two brothers in the projects named Painting Petals On Planet Ghost and Praxinoscope, as well as in the new collaboration with Z'ev) to perform with him for two months of touring throughout all Europe in May/ June 2005.
As one can imagine, the result was killer. The music which came out of the live performances was totally explosive, combining Ramona's Japanese vocals & hypnotic chimes with Greenwood's psych-blues guitar attitude & wild turntablism, over MCIAA's alien cosmic flux of electric guitars, space toys & percussions, creating a still unheard mixture of sounds unifying archaic & post-modern, western & eastern, sky & earth.
This debut CD represents a unique chance to experience almost 80 minutes of that pure and magic live action, divided in four long tracks taken from the original live recordings.
BLACK MAGIC DISCO's logo comes from the pencil of Roberto Opalio; the gatefold jacket CD artwork, curated by MCIAA contains some band photos taken during the live performances included in the record." (Important)

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read reviews here
)

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / TEXT OF LIGHT - 'Cosmic Debris, Vol.I'
2007 - split CD (A Silent Place) (heavy textured cardboard deluxe gatefold sleeve)
ASP16

"CD re-issue of the first instalment in the new "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka MY CAT IS AN ALIEN. This Volume I sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) and his all-star ensemble TEXT OF LIGHT (here featuring Alan Licht, Dj Olive, Ulrich Krieger and Tim Barnes). Their track "033103 Paris" has been recorded live at Centre Georges Pompidou in 2003 and mixed in dual mono by Ranaldo & Licht at NYC Echo Canyon studio. MCIAA's piece entitled "Everything falls like cosmic debris" is a conceptual ouverture to the whole series, performed in April 2006 at their secret recording space called Alien Zone, located up the Italian Western Alps.

The five-volumes series "Cosmic Debris" features My Cat Is An Alien alongside Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino, Mats Gustafsson, Loren Connors & his Haunted House band.

The CD cover artwork reproduces the full image and details of the acrylic paintings created by Roberto Opalio for each copy of the original vinyl edition on MCIAA's own Opax Records."

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / FAMILY UNDERGROUND
2007 - split LP (Reverse) (ltd.356, see-through vinyl, silkscreened transparent plastic sleeves)
rev-003

Danish label Reverse invited My Cat Is An Alien to split one side of vinyl with Danish drone-out band Family Underground, their piece entitled "Mysterious Invaders".

MCIAA appear with a 20 minutes track entitled "Extraterrestrial Call", recorded live at Cosmopolis Festival at Galerie Ze' des Bois, Lisbon, on October 4th, 2005.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Different Shades of Tape' BOX SET
2007 - 7" blue multicolor vinyl + C20 cassette (A Silent Place)
ASP14

Private edition of 10 (!!!) copies only.
The BOX is made of laser cut clear blue plexiglass. Drawing by Roberto Opalio silkscreened in white.

Insanely ultra-limited BOX set including the following items:
- 7" blue multicoloured VINYL (same single originally included in the out-of-print "Different shades of Blue" LP+7" Set - ASP01-1)
- C20 double play CASSETTE (handpainted on one side by Roberto Opalio) with exclusive MCIAA's live material;
- silkscreened T-SHIRT (white heavy weight Fruit of the Loom, with blue-grey negative 4-cats logo; size us Large) made exclusively for this release;
- handnumbered card insert

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Leave me in the Black No-Thing'
2007 - CD (Important Records / USA) (cardboard gatefold jacket)
imprec116

Leave Me In The Black No-Thing is the new full-lenght album recorded April 10th, 2006, at MCIAA's Alien Zone, located in a remote region of the Western Alps, Piemonte, Italy. The work consists of two tracks entitled Part One and Part Two for a total lenght of 56:15 minutes. After having been irradiated by the Cosmic Light Of A New Millenium, you find yourself facing a black and white cover, where the only view of the universe is foreshortened, and represents a lighted shape showing branches of pinetrees under a white sky, within the darkest black. Element which represents the esthetic detaching and, at the same time, a further step in the duo's artistic process, which determines their willingness to go beyond any goal already achieved. For MCIAA to make art means to risk daring the unknown, daring the listener himself to excel his own limits of perception of the work of art in music, without losing anything of their unique and unmistakable style. If, as many of the international critics have been remarking, MCIAA's works live on the boundary between Light and Darkness, it's also true that Cosmic Light of the Third Millennium celebrated the light of the outer spaces as well as Leave Me In The Black No-Thing represents a jump into the No-Thing of the empty inner spaces. Recorded in their secret recording-space up on the Western Alps of Piedmont, Italy, during the trespassing from dusk to the beginning of the night, the work lives of the same dark magic of the Wagnerian post-romantic ouvertures, suspended between the deepest silence and the most deflagrating sonic attack. Light/Darkness, noise/silence, permeated by Roberto Opalio's suffering vocal tunes, which defines and underlines the edge of the work. After the cacophonic and free implosion of the nucleus of the initials 30 minutes, 25 minutes of painful silence follow, sounding like the last whisper before the final end: angels' chorus and ectoplasmatic presences float on Maurizio Opalio's crystal-clear guitar strings. It's the Cosmic Blues of the III Millennium which penetrates into the soul, leaving indelible signs. (Important)

Cover artwork - b/w film photograph by Roberto Opalio.

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ROBERTO OPALIO - 'Chants from isolated ghosts'
2007 - CD (Important Records / USA) (cardboard gatefold sleeve)
imprec115

Roberto Opalio is half of the Italian space duo My Cat Is An Alien. Chants From Isolated Ghosts is Roberto Opalio's full-lenght debut album recorded November 2004 at home in Torino, Italy, and originally released on his own Opax Records label in a very limited handmade cd-r edition of 100 copies. The work consists of four tracks, for a total lenght of 38:02 minutes. Roberto Opalio is a visual and sound artist from Torino, Italy. His work includes painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, poetry, glass art, film/video, sound installation, and performance. Since 1998 Roberto Opalio acts as musician (together with his brother Maurizio) in the avant-garde improv duo My Cat Is An Alien. His special works of art represent the trademarked style of all the limited art-edition releases issued on their own Opax Records imprint.This aesthetic is described by Opalio as "space art". The extra-terrestrial nature of his work claims its ontological status in the act of creating a non-finished, otherwordly dimension - a proper alien dimension. In the last few years Roberto Opalio has performed his videos and specific audio visual installations in various arts & music spaces and festival in Italy and Europe, including the Sage Gateshead Newcastle and CCA Center of Contemporary Arts Glasgow in UK, Victoria Hall Geneve and Fri-son Freiburg in Switzerland, Galeria Ze' dos Bois Lisbon in Portugal, Torino BIG Biannual of Young Artists 2000, Interzona Verona, Init and Spazio S.Ambrogio Roma, Zo' Catania in Italy; group exhibition at Promotrice Delle Belle Arti Torino, as well as many other audio visual performances including Teatro Juvarra, Procope, Liber, Machè, Fuoriluogo and Villa Capriglio among others in his hometown Torino. Roberto Opalio's poetry works and drawings have been published in journals worldwide, including Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal, Thee Flat Bike and Dream Magazine in USA, Cocktail Molotov Journal in Brazil, The Sound Projector in UK, Sloow Tapes' My Favourite Magazine in Belgium among others. (Important)

Cover artwork - drawing by Roberto Opalio.

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ROBERTO OPALIO - 'The last night of the Angel of Glass, Vol.I & II'
2007 - 2xCD (A Silent Place) (Strictly limited edition of 600 copies housed in an elegant deluxe folded digi-sleeve matt varnished)
ASP11

Double CD set reissuing the acclaimed "The last night of the Angel of Glass, Vol.I", original soundtrack to the omonimous film by Roberto Opalio (released on the long-out-of-print DVD-R/CD-R set by Foxglove, USA), plus the totally previously unreleased "Vol.II" (entire disc 2), representing the second half of a unique recording session.

The work here available for the first time in its entire and remastered version was recorded by the artist himself at home in Torino, Italy, on November 1st 2005, while his camera, set on the balcony, was filming Opalio's glass-art creation (the Angel) animated by the soft light of a candle under a blackened sky. Here are the words by the artist himself, reported as liner notes inside the 6-panels gatefold sleeve featuring stills taken from the film: 'my voice/ my astral guitar/ instants of life/ home/ window of memories/ blue afternoon/ winter 2005/ cold burning flame/ torino/ whispers of glass/ suspended/ between/ day & night/ before black falls'.

Cover artwork - stills from Roberto Opalio's film 'The last night of the Angel of Glass'.

"There is no other cosmic traveller like Roberto Opalio. Best known for his work with his brother as My Cat Is An Alien, this feline twin is slowly building an equally impressive body of solo works. Opalio is on another plane entirely with "The last night of the Angel of Glass." Bypassing the cosmos completely and directing his aim straight to heaven. Using nothing but his guitar and his voice, Opalio sears the stratosphere into orbit. As his voice floats like a ghost into the empty celestial crevices, his guitar falls from the sky like a melted star. This is haunting and magnificent. Roberto Opalio at his best." (Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Il suono venuto dallo spazio'
2006 - CD (Les Disques VICTO / Canada)
VICTO cd 101

Enregistré « live » au 23e Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, le 20 mai 2006

"Each album or performance by MY CAT IS AN ALIEN is an invitation to leave on a cosmic journey, without resorting to the numerous clichés of the space music genre. Think instead of a synth-less Ash Ra Tempel coming across the quiet improvisation current. Think of stripped-down music made of looped droning guitars, caressed percussion, toy instruments and toy microphones being used while boldly disregarding all printed warnings. Think of a cosmos glorifying its vacuous interstellar space, the silence that amplifies the smallest particles of sound. Or don't think at all and just let yourself be swept away." (François Couture, février 2006)

Cover art - painting by Roberto Opalio.

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PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST - 'Oounabara'
2006 (Opax Records)

1-sided 12" lathe cut + DVD-R (special lathe cut vinyl edition by Peter King in New Zealand; private press edition of 50 copies, with original Ramona's copper-gold ink drawing on the flipside of the vinyl; also included a Roberto Opalio's silent short film on DVD-r inspired by music + art, playable together or separately; handnumbered)
OPX 024A

C20 cassette (private press limited to 62 copies, with original Ramona's copper-gold ink drawing on Japanese paper; handnumbered)
OPX 024C

"This 15 minutes song is the key-work follow up to their acclaimed debut album on Time-Lag Records. Here Roberto and Maurizio Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, act in the darkness of the outer space, while Ramona Ponzini lights up the autumnal air with her enchanting voice, along with her Japanese percussions and wind chimes; by reitering one only Japanese word (whose meaning is 'Ocean'), she creates a universe of pure magic. Radical minimalism, folk, psychedelia are the main terms that rule this mysterious chant and intimate prayer; but what you'll find here is extremely far from any unuseful relation with what you already know, representing 'Oounabara' a totally still unknown dimension of what the music of today should be: a window on Tomorrow.
"Whether electric or acoustic, the music here is deliciously paced and almost fragile, as if the whole thing were made of glass. The sounds are both somber and delirious as they gradually unwind. The sounds are made of acoustic guitar, tape loops, mystical percussion and of course, Ponzini's voice. I can just imagine these sounds wafting down off the Western Alps in Italy, where this music was recorded. Surreal fantasies begin to form as I think about it. This album deserves a full-length review's worth of appreciation for its otherworldly beauty but I am humbled by the record and can find no more words to do it justice" [Adam Richards, Indieworkshop]

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PRAXINOSCOPE - 'Epocsonixarp'
2006 - LP / CD-R (Opax Records)
OPX 023A / 023

Private press editions of 130; heavy textured cardboard sleeve with artwork taped on LP cover (sticker on CD-R), individually numbered.

"'Epocsonixarp' is the second full-lenght album of the Praxinoscope duo formed by Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petals On Planet Ghost). This work is even more lyrical and ecstatic than the debut; here Roberto's use of a mini-keyboard and astral effects collides with Ramona's hypnotic use of several handmade wood percussions and her Japanese wind chimes and bells, creating such an infinite and intimate 'space' so that you cannot but loose yourself inside. A whirlpool of Roberto's whispered wordless vocals will live till the evening dies, and the black of the night will come to surround everything. As the duo asks, 'Play it in the dark!'."
"Praxinoscope are proof that you don't need any instruments to make amazing sounds. This is wonderful, wonderful music. [Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis, editor]"

Cover art - painting by Roberto Opalio. Artwork layout by MCIAA.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'On air at Sound Projecting'
2006 - LP (Opax Records)
OPX 012A

Private vinyl ltd. edition of 158; heavy textured cardboard sleeve with artwork taped on cover, full-color insert, individually numbered.

"The entire recording of the improvised live performance at Ed Pinsent's Sound Projecting radio show, broadcasted by London's Resonance 104.4 fm on December 10th 2004. In these sessions MCIAA don't play their usual cosmic guitars, but only a couple of space toys & toy-microphones, plus a pocket theremin & mini-casio provided by Pinsent on the occasion; also featuring Pinsent himself at turntables. A different aspect of MCIAA's experimental research, as well as a new amazing adventure through the ether. Absolutely a key-document for all the fans of the band."

Cover art - drawing by Roberto Opalio.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Greetings from the Great Void'
2006 - 2xLP (Eclipse Records)(old-style heavy cardboard deluxe gatefold jacket, with full color artwork by Roberto Opalio)
ECL 054

"To approach the concept of The Great Void from an aural point-of-view is daunting. Being lost in an infinite state of flux brings simultaneous states of pure madness and tranquility. It is within this duality that the Opalio brothers, Roberto & Maurizio, wave their magic wand, creating an astral blessing of the highest order. "Greetings From the Great Void," the third installment in a trilogy that began with MCIAA's "The Rest is Silence," is the sound of The White Light; the movement from the physical to the psychic; one last breath before being consumed by the cosmic ether. "Greetings From the Great Void" shows its real strength in how it was constructed. Recorded over a two-day period in April 2005, there were no overdubs or outtakes. This is music straight from the spheres. Where there is nothing, there is everything. My Cat is an Alien emerge from these extreme conditions reborn. These recordings traverse light years of space, leaving stellar soundwaves flickering in the dust. The Opalios perform a cathartic psychedelic exorcism with each note searching for new harmonies amongst the wreckage of the cosmos. Once they pierce the heavens, they control galaxies like puppets on strings. If this is the music of The Great Void, it is a place I want to get lost in forever." (Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis / editor)

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CHRISTIAN MARCLAY & OKKYUNG LEE / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'From the earth to the Spheres, Vol.6'
2006 - split CD (A Silent Place)(heavy textured cardboard deluxe gatefold sleeve)
ASP09

"The seventh and final volume in the Turin based Opalio brothers' split series of collaborative, handcrafted LPs proves to be their most ambitious to date. A fitting finale for a series of records that has been a thrill from the very beginning" (Edwin Pouncey, The Wire)
This last release in the "From the earth to the Spheres" split series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio aka My Cat Is An Alien on their own Opax Records imprint, sees the Italian cosmic duo splitting the vinyl with well-known audio visual artist, performer and turntable-art innovator Christian Marclay together with cello improviser Okkyung Lee, ubiquitous figure of downtown NY avant-garde scene.
Their track "Rubbings" on side A is the result of a live performance recorded at Tonic NYC in December 2003. Christian Marclay's trademarked technique of mixing several ranges of Lps on his multiple turntables, manipulating, fragmenting and altering the phonograph records' sonic nature in accordance with his "theater of found sound" esthetics meets the uncompromising and passionate playing of Korean-born performer Lee, whose powerful cello's stabs interact with Marclay's waves of screaming sounds creating a unique, stunning scenario.
On B side, My Cat Is An Alien's piece "Beyond the limits of the stars/ Beyond the limits of the grooves" was recorded in 2003 at their Space Room studio in Torino, and has been kept safely in their archive 'till September 2005, when it's been completely remixed and edited appositely for this release. One of their heaviest conceptions to date, the piece is built on electric guitars' strings moaning onto walls of space drones and electronics like ectoplasmic presences emerging from the brillliance of the Void. The initial minimal and claustrophobic guitar chords become more and more an ocean of howling moduled feedbacks combined with fragmented and distorted real-time inserts of post-romantic classical music from old 78rpm shellac records, sounding like radio frequencies transmitted via ether from the furthest reaches of the Cosmos.
As the title suggests, MCIAA's need of a non-finite "space music & art" aesthetics research has led them to insert a ghost track (instead of the final lock-groove you can find on the original vinyl) to un-seal the sounds from their actual support; a purpose expressed throughout the whole "From the earth to the Spheres" series' conception."

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FABIO ORSI / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'For Alan Lomax'
2006 - split CD (A Silent Place)(ltd. ed of 500 copies/ elegant Matt varnished cardboard gatefold sleeve)
ASP10

"Tribute album to ALAN LOMAX, the man who, more than any other, have worked to "bring the music to light", in the widest and most absolute meaning of the word. A record that the space brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka MY CAT IS AN ALIEN, share with FABIO ORSI, considered by the improv duo as the most interesting emerging Italian musician, from the "bloody heart of Naples".
In his track, Orsi inserts lots of voices "stolen" from the infinite recordings made by Lomax along decades of meticulous and continuous work, and makes them hinge and nucleus of "Spring no more and love come in the wind", giving them new shape in order to make them his own; like for example a Sicilian fisherman's chant from the middle of the Twentieth century, which Orsi stretches into a low and hearthbreaking prayer, submitted to the personal and sensitive logic of his own elettroacoustic aesthetics. Though so different from each other, Orsi's and MCIAA's tracks sound complementary, and build up an original, complex and really unitary work. MCIAA's "Heart of the eartH" starts with an harmonica floating throughout cosmic sounds, while alien cosmic blues guitar chords slowly increase until an explosion of tumultuous space-noise, enhanced by Roberto Opalio's estranged vocal tune, which rises on the Great Void to celebrate the spirit of the artists which have always represented MCIAA's heroes, from Leadbelly to Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charlie Patton. The listener won't find difficult to see the great Alan Lomax materializing from the deepest Cosmos, as undiscussed discoverer of the American Primitive Music."

Cover art - b/w film photograph by Roberto Opalio.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / CORSICAN PAINTBRUSH
2006 - split 10" lathe cut (Opax Records/ Foxglove)
OPX 022A / foxglovexx1

Limited edition of 50 copies/ copper-on-black silkscreened cardboard folder jacket with artwork by Eden Hemming.

"Turin and Tulsa collide in this match made for the cosmos from the silver dust that permeates the atmosphere. Both these duos have been kissed in the third eye by the astral goddess, and the sonic ruins left behind leave nothing to chance. Minimal, cathartic excursions through starfields and galaxy farms are etched in stone on each side of this acetate beauty. My Cat Is An Alien contribute a piece recorded live on the radio. It is another side to their ever-evolving musical persona. the Opalios know how to get so much out of so little, and this piece is no different. Corsican Paintbrush, the husband-wife duo of Brad Rose & Eden Hemming, pour two wounded birds out of their hat. It's a feline-themed love affair, for sure. There's magic in these walls, and each duo does its part to crack the code. With copper-on-black silkscreened covers and limited to only 50 copies, it's time to get yourself a piece of space debris."

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - "...Ascends the sky"
2006 - CD (Rebis / Whitened Sepulchre)
WS001

"Rebis' Whitened Sepulchre reissue series kicks off with an expanded version of this out-of-print gem from cosmic improv masters My Cat Is An Alien.
Fans who have tuned in to MCIAA in more recent years wil find this earlier release (from 2001) illuminating, as it serves as both a premonition of their signature sound and a tantalizing glimpse of alternate path. While traversing the vast sonic nebulas typical of many of their releases, it also moves through more emotive, warm, and tuneful regions, evoking surprising associations like Spiderland-era Slint, early Tortoise, and Tim Buckley's Lorca or Starsailor albums. This reissue also includes an additional, previously-unreleased track, the 20-minutes opus, "Meditation on '...Ascends the Sky'".
Often released in small runs in obscure formats, many of the best albums of the past decade have been seized upon by collectors before they've had a chance to find the audience they deserve. Whitened Sepulchre, a new imprint from Rebis Recordings, aims to reverse this state of affairs, by dedicating themselves to the preservation of key recordings of the New Electric Sublime." (Rebis)

Cover art - slide by Roberto Opalio.

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PRAXINOSCOPE - 's/t'
2006 - picture disc LP (A Silent Place)
ASP08

"Praxinoscope is a new Italian duo featuring Roberto Opalio (1/2 of the the space-brother duo, My Cat is an Alien) and long-time MCIAA collaborator, Ramona Ponzini. This project traverses a similar terrain as MCIAA, but is perhaps closer to Roberto's brilliant solo album, "Chants From Isolated Ghosts". Opalio's vocals start here, taking the limelight and thriving inside it. Effects drench his voice making it something truly not of this world. These lunar oceans of sound are magnificent and totally enthralling. It's as though he's a cosmonaut trapped inside a glass box, unable to travel the reaches of space. Such confinement derails your mind and Opalio sounds like a person struggling against himself. At times, hearing this is almost too much - there's simultaneous discomfort and exorcism happening and you can't quite focus intently on either. You are a passive player in this exercise, lost in the crevices Opalio and Ponzini create. I cannot discount Ponzini's contributions to this 40 minute piece, either. While it may seem minimal on the surface, her various "Japanese percussions" (mostly chromatics, cymbals, and the like) add a great deal of needed texture to counterbalance Opalio's haunted wails.

Cover artwork - drawing by Roberto Opalio.

"Praxinoscope is a great new project from the always wonderful My Cat is an Alien. This is one of Opax's finest releases. Praxinoscope are proof that you don't need any instruments to make amazing sounds. This is wonderful, wonderful music." (Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis)

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ROBERTO OPALIO - 'Whispers of the last Light'
2006 - DVD-R (Opax Records / private handmade ltd. ed. of 100, in nice-textured cardboard tri-fold sleeve, with silver ink drawing by Roberto Opalio; handnumbered)
OPX 020V

"New short film by visual artist / musician Roberto Opalio, one half of My Cat Is An Alien. Filmed on March 21st, 2006, the video represents a visionary, introspective view of the empty spaces over the city, Torino. Through a unique, hand-manipulated shot made in real-time, Roberto Opalio's poetic fragmentation and distortion of real objects recalls early film experiments by Man Ray, as well as a certain Warholian psychedelia in the use of filtered light as a main principle of creation / perception of one's own reality. The soundtrack, recorded the same day appositely, leads to a further estrangement with the use of Opalio's looped wordless vocals and electronics merging into a heavy, ecstatic stream of sounds."

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VARIOUS ARTISTS - "Orange Gold"
2006 - C20 Cassette (Gold Soundz)
GS#58

Edition of 40 copies cassette with colour paper fold-around covers featuring one track each from Roberto Opalio, Rameses III, Agitated Radio Pilot and Shattered Minds.

Roberto Opalio appears with his previously unreleased track "Transparent Moods"

VARIOUS ARTISTS - "Red Gold"
2006 - C20 Cassette (Gold Soundz)
GS#57

Edition of 40 copies cassette with colour paper fold-around covers featuring one track each from Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Infinite Article, Crazy River, Sindre Bjerga and United Bible Studies.

PPOPG appear with the previously unreleased track "Oceano"

VARIOUS ARTISTS - "Yellow Gold"
2006 - C20 Cassette (Gold Soundz)
GS#55

Edition of 40 copies cassette with colour paper fold-around covers featuring one track each from My Cat Is An Alien, Entente Cordiale, Number None and Secrets To The Sea.

MCIAA appear with the previously unreleased track "Cosmic Distance"

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DREAM #6  
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'The secret of the Dancing Snow'
2006 - CD (Ikuisuus)(4-panels full-color foldout cardboard jacket)
IKU-003

"Another voyage into the inky blackness with the cosmos-loving Italians and another gem. MCIAA have gone from making dronescapes that were merely beautiful to listen to (merely!) to vast vistas of sound that seem to exert an almost gravitational pull into their depths. This opens with Roberto Opalio's parched vocal trances and the calming ching of Oriental bells and builds into a soporific sea of echoing guitar notes with bells rippling through it like a warm wind. For some reason, the line from "Astronomy Domine" about "the blue you once knew" comes to mind. The sound then appears to collapse in on itself before ebbing into freefall. Divinely beautiful." (Boa Melody Bar)

Cover art - polaroid photographs by Roberto Opalio.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / TONY HERRINGTON - 'Joint Multiples 04'
2006 - Box/CD-R/Painting/Polaroid/Painted Photograph

Latest eye-popping assemblage (fourth in an on-going series that has included collaborations with Bruce Russell, Savage Pencil and Jim Sauter) box from Mr Tony Herrington, artist/post-punk scholar and Wire publisher/editor-in-chief. Herrington has long been wrestling personally resonant forms from brushes and pens in the privacy of his own smoking den but this series - inspired, in part by the recent international upsurge in grassroots DIY documentation - represents his first public outing. The whole deal comes loaded inside a hand-painted 10.5" x 10.5" box containing exclusive original audio by My Cat Is An Alien entitled "Space Fluxus" that combines the slow-mo ecstasy of their all-improvised Opax sides with some of the zazen ritual of the Painting Petals On Planet Ghost material, with the Opalios joined by Ramona Ponzini on Japanese instruments and windchimes. As usual it comes with a beautiful original acrylic painting from Herrington, executed on an 8" canvas frame, one that seems to take-off from MCIAA's iconographic cosmological eye/lonely astronaut imagery, with red glops of ellipsis brain-beaming rays of tone into black storm-shuddered skies. Also includes an original untitled Polaroid by Roberto Opalio, an evocatively charred/painted photograph from Herrington and a hand-written credits insert on art paper. The set comes in a mind-bogglingly non-infinite edition of five hand-numbered copies, only three of which are available for sale. None of the contents will ever be reissued. A unique chance to own a singular modern art edition, and a must for all MCIAA completists. Highest recommendation. (Volcanic Tongue)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Cosmic Light of the Third Millennium'
2006 - CD (Important Records / USA)
imprec077

"Like some kind of droned out Sun Ra, My Cat Is An Alien landed and stayed only long enough to drop off the masters and the artwork at Important Records before vanishing into the cosmos, or Torino, once again. This new full-length album recorded April 2005 at MCIAA's Alien Zone, located in a remote region of the Western Alps, Piemonte, Italy. The work consists of three tracks entitled "Section I-II-III" for a total lenght of 49:20 minutes. Here the Opalio space-brothers push their improvised music of the Spheres in new cosmic territories, where the use of Roberto's wordless vocals impresses a still unheard lyricism inside the sublime complexity of their unique musical textures. "Section I" opens the album with a slow and emotional epic crescendo generated by floating waves of electric space-guitars alongside glittering sounds of mini-xylophone and toy piano; this impressive astral monochord-blues increase leads to a denouement of electronics & cymbals storm. Whispered wordless moaning vocals and sparse rythmic percussions resonating in the distance open "Section II", where the celestial explosion is followed by droning walls of guitar sounds and space-toys effects, lost in a vertical streamline of astral debris. An ambient minimal guitar tune introduces the final "Section III": reiterated and limpid single guitar chords disclose the enlightened beauty of the Cosmos. In "Cosmic Light of the Third Millennium" MCIAA's mystic alien chants celebrate the beginning and the coming of a new era of the Cosmic Light." (Important)

Cover art - polaroid photographs by Roberto Opalio.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Introducing the Cosmic Blues'
2006 - 7 inch (Important Records)
imprec093

"Introducing The Cosmic Blues" is My Cat Is An Alien's introduction to their full length release on Important Records. This 7" is limited to only 300 copies and each comes in deluxe screen printed packaging with an individual Polaroid photograph taken, altered and signed by Roberto Opalio. But what does it sound like? Just as the Cosmic Blues should: like MCIAA invented their own instruments and discovered an unknown universe to play them in.
This is the fifth release in Important's ongoing Arts And Crafts series with each release containing handmade artwork by the artist on the recordings." (Important)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Listen before Black falls'
2006 - LP (Root Strata)
RS-10

Black chipboard covers with silk-screened fronts and hand drawn text/numbers on the back. Limited edition of 300.

"A third eye laser beam shot from the catacombs of Torino. An acoustic guitar lullaby leads down a long dark tunnel of alpha wave feedback. Killer." (Root Strata)

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GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION with NELS CLINE / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'From the earth to the Spheres, Vol.5'
2006 - split CD (Very Friendly/ Cargo UK)
VF023CD

Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, split the sixth volume of their "From the earth to the Spheres" series with San Francisco's cult band Glands Of External Secretion. On this occasion the duo, formed in 1992 by Bananafish magazine founder Seymour Glass and indie-rock princess Barbara Manning, features the special collaboration of well-known guitarist improviser Nels Cline (now member of Wilco). The trio's track "Icebox (defrosted mix)" is a slow ascent from the realm of isolationism, through frozen tape manipulation and icy drones, terrific voices and subtle infernal groans which seem to come from the obscure side of the Moon, where Cline's estranged looped lap steel is ready to launch the ultimate attack to Earth.
On the other side of the flip, MCIAA's "After the Meteor Shower" represents a further experiment in the use of Roberto's unearthly fragmented vocals, as a way to create heavy-emotional textures of interstellar tunes. A cosmic rain of howling guitars & electronics introduces the fall into a silent, ritualistic procession marked by the distant echo of a drum, alongside a whispered chant over real sounds emerging from the concrete surface of the Planet.
Latest CD re-issue in the series featuring Thurston Moore, Thuja, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Christina Carter & Andrew MacGregor, Christian Marclay & Okkyung Lee.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Different shades of Blue'
2006 - LP (A Silent Place)

*ASP01 <standard edition> LP (limited to 700 copies black vinyl LP; full colour insert and 21x15cm postcard)

**ASP01-1 <special edition> LP + 7" (limited to 131 copies, blue coloured vinyl LP + bonus multi-colour effect 7"; full colour insert and 21x15cm postcard)

***ASP01-BOX <Art Box Set Deluxe> LP + 7" + painting (silkscreened box limited to 19 copies; blue coloured vinyl LP + bonus multi-colour effect 7"; original 12"x12" painting by Roberto Opalio, poster, full colour insert and 21x15cm postcard)

"This release is the reissue of the limited cd-r edition on Tom Greenwood's U-Sound Archive (Vol. 19). Improvisation recorded on February 12th, 2004 at MCIAA's Space Room, Torino, Italy (no overdubs/ no outtakes).
This new vinyl edition is a different version, remastered and re-edited of "Different shades of Blue"; the 7" single, included in the first 131 copies, contains the original final of the complete work. Furthermore, this special edition will include also the un-edited artwork originally made by Roberto Opalio and completely inspired to the homonymous painting of him. Space-ambient soundscapes with minimal textures from the heart of the cosmos. Dream Music. Packaged in an elegant cover. With 1 insert and 1 large postcard (21cm x 15cm)." (A Silent Place)

"[Different shades of Blue] is another bout of glittering jewels, sputtering star systems and piercing high drones courtesy of your favourite astral-obsessed Italian duo. [...] As ever, their sonic output is at once reassuringly recognisable but still disconcertingly bizarre, forever reaching upwards and outwards, seeking to escape the confines of gravity and atmosphere in favour of celestial salvation." - Dave Stockwell, Foxi Digitalis

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CHRISTIAN MARCLAY & OKKYUNG LEE / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'From the earth to the Spheres, Vol.7'
2006 - split ART-LP (Opax Records - special SPACE ART ltd ed of 100/ original 31x31 cm painting on wooden support by Roberto Opalio as cover)
OPX LP7

"The seventh and final volume in Opalio brothers' split series of collaborative, handcrafted LPs proves to be their most ambitious to date. A fitting finale for a series of records that has been a thrill from the very beginning" (Edwin Pouncey, The Wire)

This last release in the "From the earth to the Spheres" split series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio aka My Cat Is An Alien on their own Opax Records imprint, sees the Italian cosmic duo splitting the vinyl with well-known audio visual artist, performer and turntable-art innovator Christian Marclay together with cello improviser Okkyung Lee, ubiquitous figure of downtown NY avant-garde scene.
Their track "Rubbings" on side A is the result of a live performance recorded at Tonic NYC in December 2003. Christian Marclay's trademarked technique of mixing several ranges of Lps on his multiple turntables, manipulating, fragmenting and altering the phonograph records' sonic nature in accordance with his "theater of found sound" esthetics meets the uncompromising and passionate playing of Korean-born performer Lee, whose powerful cello's stabs interact with Marclay's waves of screaming sounds creating a unique, stunning scenario.
On B side, My Cat Is An Alien's piece "Beyond the limits of the stars/ Beyond the limits of the grooves" was recorded in 2003 at their Space Room studio in Torino, and has been kept safely in their archive 'till September 2005, when it's been completely remixed and edited appositely for this release. One of their heaviest conceptions to date, the piece is built on electric guitars' strings moaning onto walls of space drones and electronics like ectoplasmic presences emerging from the brillliance of the Void. The initial minimal and claustrophobic guitar chords become more and more an ocean of howling moduled feedbacks combined with fragmented and distorted real-time inserts of post-romantic classical music from old 78rpm shellac records, sounding like radio frequencies transmitted via ether from the furthest reaches of the Cosmos.
As the title suggests, MCIAA's need of a non-finite "space music & art" esthetics research has led them to etch a final lock-groove to un-seal the sounds from their actual support; a purpose expressed throughout the whole "From the earth to the Spheres" series' conception.
Roberto Opalio's painting on wood, mixing white acrylic paste with transparent glass fragments, recalls the shape of a 12" vinyl, yet of a cosmic whirling galaxy as well; here's the encounter between the "physical support" of art and its "ethereal form", a further reminder that the music belongs to an extra-terrestrial dimension, and one of MCIAA's purpose is to return it to the Spheres.

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MAURIZIO OPALIO - "Way up to Enfer"
2006 - CD-R (Opax Records)
OPX 019

Private handmade ltd. ed. of 100; handnumbered, look-like-vinyl black-bottom cd-r in nice-textured cardboard tri-fold sleeve, with charcoal drawing by Maurizio Opalio.

"First soloist release by one-half of My Cat Is An Alien, space brother Maurizio Opalio. "Way up to Enfer" is the entire recording of an acoustic, totally improvised session performed on December 31th, 2005 at My Cat Is An Alien's new Alien Zone headquarters, located somewhere in the Italian Western Alps. Along the two tracks featured in "Way up to Enfer", Maurizio's acoustic guitar notes create subtle killer tunes woven in a richly textured harp-like fingerpicked style, like the charming sound of a lyre emerging from a spinning maelstrom in the sea. There are no space sounds here, but clearly emotional rises, an acoustic resistance to the falling darkness, or maybe just the right way up to Enfer."

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Folclore Alieno'
2006 - CD-R (Opax Records)
OPX 018

Private handmade ltd. ed. of 150; look-like-vinyl black-bottom cd-r in nice-textured heavy-cardboard tri-fold sleeve, handnumbered and painted by Roberto Opalio.

"This is the first MCIAA's completely acoustic release. Its six tracks aren't but a unique entire session which has been recorded on January the 1st, 2006, at the Opalio brothers' new mysterious "Alien Zone" headquarters, located in a remote region of the Western Alps, Piemonte, Italy. The whole recording came as a sort of propitiatory ritual to welcome the new alien year, intended as a new cycle in the duo's imagery of the cosmic universe, here approached in enchanted trance-like minimal pieces; Roberto's vocals emerge like primitive human hymns from the two brothers' acoustic guitars textures. This is entranced, mystic alien music."

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - "There's a flame___sometimes"
2006 - LP (Rococo Records)
RCC-0005

Ltd.ed of 500 in navy cardstock cover with silver inked letter press / first 100 copies in transparent blue vinyl.

"For all of you who fell in love with My Cat Is An Alien's previous albums "Il Segno" and "When the windmill's whirl dies", here's a new full-lenght, beautifully packaged LP based on a spoken-word poem whispered by Roberto Opalio over the space brothers' subtle texture of percussions, guitars and electronics...ready for the anti-gravitational impact?"

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ROBERTO OPALIO - 'The last night of the Angel of Glass'
2006 - DVD-R + CD-R set (Foxglove)
foxglove103

"There is no other cosmic traveller like Roberto Opalio. Best known for his work with his brother as My Cat Is An Alien, this feline twin is slowly building an equally impressive body of solo works. Opalio is on another plane entirely with "the last night of the angel of glass." bypassing the cosmos completely and directing his aim straight to heaven. Using nothing but his guitar and his voice, Opalio sears the stratosphere into orbit. As his voice floats like a ghost into the empty celestial crevices, his guitar falls from the sky like a melted star. This is haunting and magnificent. Roberto Opalio at his best. The dvd-r was filmed in winter 2005 in real-time from Roberto's balcony in Torino and is an audio/visual treat. The cd-r is the soundtrack to the film. 100 copies" (Foxglove)

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>> read reviews

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST - 's/t'
2005 - LP (Time-Lag Records)
TIME-LAG 030

"Debut recording from Italy's Opalio brothers (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini. An esoteric and mesmerizing trip through space, minimalism, and emotion. Each track recorded at a different mystical location in the western alps, and centered around ramona's beautiful vocals, all of which are sung in traditional Japanese. Maurizio & Roberto add sparse accompaniment by means of toy piano, alien keyboard tones, antique accordion, percussion, tape effects, and some particularly evocative acoustic guitar. The whole thing comes off alternately as deeply meditative or chillingly haunted, depending on your attention & mood. Silence, space & ritual are hugely important here, with notes & words hovering frozen in time... while the My Cat Is An Alien moniker might leave some folks scratching their heads, here the Painting Petals On Planet Ghost name nails it: fragile, beautiful, cosmically isolationist, and totally spooked..." (Time-Lag)

*'standard edition' - Pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl, and lushly packaged with letterpress printed cover & insert. Printed with copper ink on exquisite & massively thick handmade ivory art paper, each sheet cast one at a time & air dried. Hand numbered edition of 560 copies.

**'special edition' - Same music and art as the standard version, but the cover/insert are extra think midnight blue/black, and available only to folks on the Time-Lag mailing list. Hand numbered edition of 100 copies.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Astral Key'
2005 - CD-R (Esquilo Records)
ES002|ESVGRA001

"The first instalment in the Granite Series features Italian improv/drone rock duo My Cat Is An Alien further exploring their sound. This recording is taken from one of their recent European tour shows were they have showcased their music exploring the possibilities of the guitar drone and its associations with the sounds from the galaxy. The scotish landscape may have provided the right atmosphere, but the stars had to be aligned so that the brothers Opalio could accomplish such set. Magical as they have described it.
This edition comes in a black gatefold cardboard sleeve with an original photo on the cover. There are three different photos - three different covers. The CD is silkscreened with an original star map. Limited to 120 copies." (Esquilo)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'The Cosmological Eye Trilogy'
2005 - 3xCD set (Last Visible Dog)
LVD 072/073/074

"A three CD set collecting the original volume I&II, the unreleased volume III and an hour and 15 minutes of additional material. To my ears, this sounds like Sun Ra (circa Heliocentric Worlds vol. one) performing Dream Music. The most organic and certainly cosmic minimalism I've yet to hear!" (LVD)

Cover art - painting by Roberto Opalio.

(read reviews here)

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ROBERTO OPALIO - 'voice with no guitar/ guitar with no voice'
2005 - C20 cassette (private handmade ltd. ed. of 69, in Japanese-paper envelope, hand-sewn with string, handnumbered and drawn by Roberto Opalio)
OPX TP01

The first analog cassette release by Roberto Opalio. On side A, a 10-minutes-long solo-voice piece in Roberto's typical wordless-vocals style; on side B a 10-minutes-long solo-guitar piece of pure space drones. Recorded at home September 9th, 2005, in Torino, Italy.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Plutonian flames'
2005 - 2xCD-R (private handmade ltd. ed. of 120; look-like-vinyl black-bottom cd-rs in heavy-cardboard gatefold sleeve, handnumbered and painted by Roberto Opalio)
OPX 016/017

These are four of the wildest sessions ever recorded by Italian space brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio at their famed Space Room in Torino, Italy. Cosmic guitar whirls and piano-toy action alongside a tribal, compulsive percussion-set which makes their space drones shake the air the way Xenakis would have made if he ever had directed a primitive tribe from another galaxy. If you never considered Pluto as one of your favourite hangouts, the 85 minutes of "Plutonian flames" will definitely break you in.

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GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION with NELS CLINE / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'From the earth to the Spheres, Vol.6'
2005 - split LP (private SPACE ART ltd ed of 100/ original 31x31 cm painting on wooden support by Roberto Opalio as cover)
OPX LP6

Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, split the sixth volume of their "From the earth to the Spheres" series with San Francisco's cult band Glands Of External Secretion. On this occasion the duo, formed in 1992 by Bananafish magazine founder Seymour Glass and indie-rock princess Barbara Manning, features the special collaboration of well-known guitarist improviser Nels Cline (now member of Wilco). The trio's track "Icebox" is a slow ascent from the realm of isolationism, through frozen tape manipulation and icy drones, terrific voices and subtle infernal groans which seem to come from the obscure side of the Moon, where Cline's estranged looped lap steel is ready to launch the ultimate attack to Earth. On the other side of the flip, MCIAA's "After the Meteor Shower" represents a further experiment in the use of Roberto's unearthly fragmented vocals, as a way to create heavy-emotional textures of interstellar tunes. A cosmic rain of howling guitars & electronics introduces the fall into a silent, ritualistic procession marked by the distant echo of a drum, alongside a whispered chant over real sounds emerging from the concrete surface of the Planet.
New volume in the series featuring Thurston Moore, Thuja, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Jim O’Rourke, Christina Carter & Andrew MacGregor, Christian Marclay & Okkyung Lee. Each vol comes as a special SPACE ART ltd. only-vinyl edition of 100 copies, whose “sleeves” are Roberto Opalio’s original paintings on 31x31cm wood supports.
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VVAA - 'THE INVISIBLE PYRAMID: ELEGY BOX'
2005 - 6 CD compilation (Last Visible Dog)
LVD 080/086

"LVD's second compilation and spiritual successor to Drunken Fish's Harmony of the Spheres box (EP length submissions), but instead of 6 artists, there are now 31. The set features all exclusive material, and the total running time clocks in around 7 hours and 36 minutes. This compilation, like the first Invisible Pyramid comp (2003), finds its inspiration in the writings of Loren Eiseley (naturalist, anthropologist, and essayist); for whom an elegy to the first victims of the still-escalating wave of man-made mass extinction seemed appropriate. Each artist has dedicated their track to a recently extinct species (with a short bio), and Jeff Knoch (Urdog) has written a substantial essay to accompany the set." (LVD)
MCIAA play "Elegy for all the extinct alien species"

Disc 1: Black Forest/Black Sea, Birchville Cat Motel, Wolfmangler, Loren Chasse, Bardo Pond
Disc 2: es, Andrea Belfi & Stefano Pilia, Sunken, Kulkija, Tomu Tonttu
Disc 3: UP-TIGHT, Flies Inside the Sun, Uton, mudboy, Steven R. Smith
Disc 4: Keijo, Doktor Kettu, My Cat Is An Alien, One Inch of Shadow, Fursaxa
Disc 5: Ashtray Navigations, Peter Wright, Geoff Mullen, Urdog, Miminokoto
Disc 6: Area C, Ben Reynolds, Seht, Avarus, Renato Rinaldi, Matt De Gennaro

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CHRISTINA CARTER & ANDREW MACGREGOR / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'From the earth to the Spheres, Vol.4'
2005 - CD (Very Friendly/Cargo Records)
VF 021 CD

Brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio split this forth release in the series with the American queen of psich-free-folk music Christina Carter (Charalambides, Scorces), here at her debut as the new duo-project together with Andrew MacGregor (Gown). The title of their piece, “We know when we are thinking about each other”, gives an idea of the intimate mood which envelops their two guitars’ minimal tunes, made of reiterate single notes which recall Christina’s last masterpieces as Scorces and Charalambides; her harsh yet warm plucking at the strings and her fascinating vocals, accompanied by Andrew’s bass guitar chords and singing, sound as if the listener was called to witness the secret dialogues between two distant lovers’ hearts. The title of MCIAA’s track, “The circle of life & death”, fits as ever before Roberto’s cover painting, where the dark imprints left by a white leaf on the acrylic-colored wooden surface create a circle-like representation of life and death. As the violet color recalls transcendence indeed, so do the opening floating-guitar tunes and Roberto’s wordless-vocal hymn: this is probably the most melodic piece in all MCIAA’s career to date, since the musical texture represents a new starting point from which their space guitar sounds can develop. The piece moving into a sort of Wagnerian epic crescendo, a raging storm of space fragments from beyond the Solar system will imbue the Earth with a blinding light, before everything collapses into the darkness of the Cosmos.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Alien Minds'
2005 - C60 cassette (Sloow Tapes) (wrapped in heavy spraypainted paper envelope with lots of photographs. Limited to only 80 copies)

"The slow unfolding galaxies of sonic bliss transmitted by the Opalio brothers' astral guitars, alien percussion and occasional vocals lie somewhere between drone en noise. The awesome Italian duo continue their search for unexplained fractured textures of free floating cosmos sounds in these two long tracks that dig deep into the depths of unexplored space." - Sloow Tapes

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – 'Different shades of blue' - U-Sound Archive vol.19
2005 - CD-R
U-Sound

"My Cat Is An Alien is the improv duo formed by the brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio from Torino, Italy, in late 1997. They both primarily play electric and acoustic guitars, various toy-instruments and voice toy-microphones, percussions. This recording was made in their 'Space Room' on February 12, 2004. The first 50 copies of all U-SOUND titles are in special handmade packaging, the remainder in the now familiar generic styling of the label.
A space–ambient suite of minimal textures from the heart of the cosmos”.

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JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – “From the earth to the Spheres, Vol.3'
2005 - CD (Very Friendly/Cargo Records)
VF019CD

JOMF's piece "Breaking" begins with a kind of old gospel fragmented by beats, which moves throughout empty areas 'till imploding into deconstructed sounds & voices over vinyl scratches, where silence breaks out loud & unexpected. MCIAA's "Blank View" is a psychic trip moving from the deep darkness towards the brightest light. this totally improvised track, made of interwoven sounds of cathartic guitar chords , percussions & xylophone, is permeated by wordless vocals, whose impressive and sad lyricism comes out from a streamline of sounds from outer space. (Cargo)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'When the windmill’s whirl dies'
2005 - LP (Eclipse Records)
ECL040

“…Here we are/ Dancing with the dark shadows/ Here we are/ Dancing with the dark shadows…”
This is the incipit of the first side of “When the windmill’s whirl dies”, the new work by the space-brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, alias My Cat Is An Alien; and here we are indeed, ready to dance with the shadows which surround the Light, as the intimate and vividly estranged mood originated by the floating guitar tunes will enter the furthest meanders of your mind. Both the words, recited and shaped by Roberto from his own homonymous poem that suggested the title of the album, and the oblique minimalism of the complex musical texture made of flowing space sounds, represent the abstract neo-expressionistic substratum of the whole corpus of the work. Moving throughout a nebula of space dust and debris, the starting spoken-word vocals alongside the percussive section sound as powerfully impressive as the violent imagery of trees beaten down by the storm, while the whispered silence of “Perspective of time” and “Fallin’”, on side two, discloses the emotional and existential universe of an isolated broken soul, lost in a world of inanity. This is the center of the No-thing Universe, where each single word or sound assumes the aspect of a sort of pagan prayer that speaks the language of astral folk-blues.
In this context, MCIAA’s outer space becomes a re-found uterus, meant to be the form of a new self-biogenesis. At the same time, space is conceived as symbol of the eternal theatre surrounding the mysterious cycle of life & death; such infinite space, despite such limited time. This cosmic-chant of the new millennium may heat our nights like a flame left to enlighten the shadows of the coldest darkness. At the end of it all, some words will still be ringing in our minds: “…So, we’ll never forget the light”. After 2004’s key-work “The rest is silence”, MCIAA’s “When the windmill’s whirl dies” comes as the second act of a trilogy dedicated to the Great Void.
A beautiful recording housed in a thick, heavy duty gatefold sleeve. Edition of 600 copies. -Eclipse Records
Gatefold cover art - b/w film photographs by Roberto Opalio.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – 'Everything is here'
2005 – special lathe-cut 7” (Gold Soundz)
GS#30

MCIAA proudly announce their first 7” format release, a special lathe-cut transparent vinyl edition of 50 (!!) numbered copies, hand-shaped by the well-known New Zealander Peter King for Sindre Bjerga’s Gold Soundz label (Norway).
A previously unreleased 11 min. track, as ultimate cosmic blues for the rainy days.

Artwork - polaroid photograph by Roberto Opalio.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – 'Through the reflex of the rain'
2005 – CD (Free Porcupine Society/ Revolver USA)
FPS 011 CD

In early 2004, the free-floating guitar chords of My Cat Is An Alien interacted with the real voice of their hometown Torino, Italy. After several days of incessant winter rain, they let down a wide-stereo-range microphone fixed to a thirty-foot-long cable from the window of their Space Room, which hung three feet off the ground, swinging by the wind, capturing the sounds of rain and cars from the outside streets. Inside the Space Room, Maurizio and Roberto Opalio performed alien guitar tunes and astral percussive textures, with Roberto mixing the outside soundscape in real-time with the inside improv session. Through The Reflex Of The Rain is a weird, intimate and very impressive atmosphere. (special silkscreened gatefold cardboard jackets by Rob Fisk) (Revolver)

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THUJA / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – 'From the earth to the Spheres, Vol.2'
2004 - CD (Very Friendly/Cargo Records)
VF 016 CD

Thuja’s “The Magma Is The Brother Of The Stone” is one of the most adventurous hypnotic works in their whole discography. MCIAA’s “When The Earth Whispered Your Name” is a new departure towards the void of the Cosmos, where high frequency ectoplasms sound no more like howls, but like a more & more intimate blues. (Cargo)

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THURSTON MOORE / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – 'From the earth to the Spheres, Vol.1'
2004 - CD (Very Friendly/Cargo Records)
VF 015 CD

Thurston Moore starts things off with a 21 min piece fragmented by splinters of sonic feedback & howling guitar. My Cat Is An Alien erect minimal textures created essentially by guitar space-drones influenced by early American minimalism. – Cargo UK

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – 'The rest is silence'
2004 - 2xLP (Eclipse Records)

“The rest is silence” is ‘till now the most complete an various work of My Cat Is An Alien. After some totally improvised works, such as “Landscapes of an electric city” on Ecstatic Peace and “Il Segno” on Starlight Furniture Co., with this debut release on Eclipse Records MCIAA start a more complex and oblique studio-modus operandi, in which the instantaneous composition is now a basement open to stratified extraterrestrial fluxus of sounds, often permeated by melancholic vocal inserts.
The title of this new double album is taken from the last words spoken by Hamlet before his dying in the homonymous Shakespearian’s tragedy. The whole corpus of the work is an ectoplasm of sounds flowing from the earth surface towards the sky; with their electric and acoustic guitars, some pedal effects and a series of weird space-toys, MCIAA light a candle as a bright beacon in the darkness of the Great Void.
From the “Infinite Spaces” incipit, a sad whispered voice delayed through a toy-megaphone, moving on isolated guitar strokes going downhill, defines “The rest is silence” vocabulary: a new intimate alien folky-blues mood expanded on the avant-space sounds that have marked MCIAA since their beginning.
Self-recorded and produced in Torino at their own “Space Room” headquarters during the cold winter time, “The rest is silence” speaks the same intimate and desolated language of Tim Buckley’s “Lorca” and reflects the same suffering of some primitive folk-blues masters such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, projected in the deepest outer space.
Each track is dedicated to the mystery of the 4 elements (air, earth, fire, water), as surrealist metaphors involving the mystery of life and death.
When all is over, things vanish in the quiet brilliance of the Cosmos; MCIAA will stay ‘till “Silence will come to stay forever”…- Eclipse Records

Gatefold cover art - painting by Roberto Opalio.

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – 'Il Segno'
2003 - LP (Starlight Furniture Co.)
#20

Beginning with a gloomy text entitled "The Sign" written by guitarist / lyricist Roberto Opalio, My Cat Is An Alien entered The Space Room and recorded this dark and concrete improvisation, a single piece of howling and caustic ruination stretched over two sides of vinyl. Maurizio Opalio comes out of the fog with desolate acoustic guitar scratches, Roberto's electric space guitar scribbles as he spits out his words of urban alienation, and Viggiu Vortex joins the brothers on percussion. Piano toy and toy keyboard were added later to enhance the surreal lyrics inspired by ghosts, a sense of psychic, cultural and social isolation in their hometown Torino, Italy, and the infinite lightness and beauty between the cement and the sky. Il Segno is about the mark of chance, avenues full of dust and fallen leaves, the Torino skyline's abandoned factories and chimneys with the mountains all around, and the dance of swallows at twilight, just before the darkness envelops everything. – Revolver USA

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – 'Landscapes of an electric city/ Hypnotic Spaces'
2002 - 3-sided LP (Ecstatic Peace!)
e#54b

"In late 1997 Maurizio Opalio, as My Cat Is An Alien, recorded a CDR, wrapped it in electric wires and sent it to Sonic Youth in NYC. Sonic Youth unwrapped it, played it, and were immediately and pleasantly flattened by its green ray emanations. The music was zoned dronescapes with enough rock + roll energy to keep the blood pumping from head to loin. The double LP Landscapes Of An Electric City/Hypnotic Spaces (Ecstatic Peace E#54b) contains a remastered version of Landscapes Of An Electric City + an entire previously unreleased EP of alien cat rock songs. The music has primary reference to the visitant sounds of such sky kissers as Damo Suzuki and Herman ‘Sonny’ Blount as well as the blasting concepts of early Fall and Theoretical Girls. Where My Cat Is An Alien can go next may be almost anywhere we'd suspect but Jupiter is a good guess. Torino is your safest bet though." – Ecstatic Peace

Cover art - slide by Roberto Opalio.

NOTE: this record is different from "Landscapes Of An Electric City" CD-R (1999, ZZZProd.)

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN – 'Alien dissolving'
1999 – CD-R (ZZZProd.) (handmade ltd ed of 100 in aluminium paper & iron wire)
ZZZ-12a

A 14 min alien improv track - get and listen to it one more time before its total dissolving!

 

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN - 'Landscapes of an electric city'
1999 – CD-R (ZZZProd.)
ZZZ-12

Special ltd ed in heavy cardboard packaging with 9 art-card photos. First 100 copies with hand-drawn cd-r surface.

A three-movement space improvisation dedicated to MCIAA's hometown Torino

Cover art - slide by Roberto Opalio.