Florence is one of the many jewels of Italy, a Tuscan city renowned for its art, architecture, and rich cultural history. But like all of the world’s great cities it has also been the setting for terrible events.
In areas near the city, for example, a serial killer known as The Monster of Florence murdered 14 victims (mutilating many of them) over the course of a decade or more in the 1970s’ and ’80s, and we’re told that it is in the area of those infamous events where Vacuo was born.
This solo project draws inspiration not from the beauty of Florence but from abyssal and abismal visions, and creates frightening audio renderings of them from ingredients of lo-fi black metal, abraded dungeon synth, noise, and freakish electronics.
Vacuo‘s debut, the work of sole member A., takes the form of an experimental EP named To Languish and Despair, which will be released by the Italian label Xenoglossy Productions on September 29th, and today we’re introducing you to its chilling fascinations through our premiere of the EP’s opening track, “To the Putrefying Chants“.
In the beginning, glitchy electronic spurts and spasms greet the ears, as if someone were trying to tune in a transmission using an old tube radio. The correct source is located, and what comes through the channel is a wash of scathing and wailing sound, the pop of a drum like a manic metronome, and terrorizing screams.
The audio abrasion is dense and hostile, the transmission obscured by static, but that just makes the listener lean forward, trying to focus better on the crystalline wailing and warping tones that writhe and glitter through the swaths of grit, eerie sounds of revelatory splendor within a toxic miasma.
The drums steady themselves; long moaning tones claw their way forward in agony; that voice howls and shrieks with berserk intensity, in pain or in fury. The experience leaves the thick ichor of misery in the ears — and the intrigue that comes from glimpsing harrowing horrors and glistening ephemera of magnificence from another world.
To Languish and Despair was mixed and mastered by Francesco Toninelli at Suite Ohm Studio (Scandicci, Florence, Italy). Xenoglossy will release it in a pitch-black tape edition, limited to only 30 copies. It will also be available as a digital download. Pre-orders are open now:
PRE-ORDER:
https://xenoglossyproductions.bandcamp.com/album/to-languish-and-despair