MAO - Atrocity Exhibition (2020)
Producer: Fabrizio Federico
Official Website: http://fabriziofederico.co.uk/01 - Atrocity Exhibition (intro) 0:0002 - Donovan's Brain 2:0003 - Sky Eyes 6:1004 - Go Ask Alice 10:5605 - The Assassination Of Amanda Knox 18:5006 - Crushed 21:2907 - REDRUM 25:2808 - Crayon Pictures of UFOs 28:0909 - Xmas In China 32:4010 - U Aint Getting No Love 34:5911 - Wrong's (Anthem to Rock Stardom) 37:39
An upcoming film dedicated to Kurt Cobain of legendary band Nirvana is being set for release in 2019 by outspoken ''Youtube filmmaker'' Fabrizio Federico, ''the film captures the spirit of Kurt's morals, not his life, but about how straight men like him can be in harmony with both their male and feminine side. We are Zen. I think Kurt was a great example of that vibe, he wanted to point us towards a more progressive society, saying 'why bother hurting each other, and all that other crap' you know, nevermind, as the lad once said.'' It's an ugly film, so ugly that it's the perfect experimental pop culture film for a new generation of 'Me Too movement' supporters. April's terrifying reality; spat out by the modelling industry, burned out, and now being tortured by her own inner demons is brought to light by the films soundtrack of doughy classical, Indian and trap music, including an end credits anthem called Wrong's by Mao, (their last album was recorded at Aleister Crowley's old haunted home facing Loch Ness) which is very uplifting in a Total Eclipse Of The Heart, way, that Kurt would have loved, his pop sensibilities were always the secret weapon behind Nirvana's power.
''The idea of the 'It girl' was first personified by actress Clara Bow in the movie 'It' (1927) which helped usher in the age of the wild flapper girl in the roaring 20's along with other intellectual sirens such as Louise Brooks. The role of the vivacious, sexual, youth-quake secretly fascinates every teenage girl early in life, and who must secretly and subconsciously try to, live up to/ or tame. Before either eventually self-destructing or simply growing out of it. In world culture, magazines, music videos, books and films have depicted this prototype historical personality of the goddess Maenad, her name literally translates as "raving ones". Over the years there have been many 'It girls' who have captured our hedonistic times, and our public's imagination with either cheap karaoke or artistic flair, girls like Kate Moss, Twiggy, Kim Kardashian, Cornelia Guest, Cara Delevingne, Paris Hilton, Kendall Jenner - but there are strange and tragic examples also of young ''it girls' lives being cut short by the seductions of glory and fame, such as, Gia, Donyale Luna, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Peaches Geldof and Edie Sedgwick.'' In the film her problems first started either after April become an edgy out of control teen model in Hollywood, or after joining a Las Vegas cult and being abducted by aliens while living near Area 51, nobody knows, it just started one day. Today she exists in five different realities. Now living in London, April is not a virgin, but one of her personality's, called Sam, wants to desperately lose her virginity at any cost. While she falls apart right in front of our eyes, she screams, scratches and bites away while combing her hair to smithereens, eating disgusting cold cheese and milk while switching personalities; whom one of them likes the taste of her own bloody tampons in a hot bath, wearing just a bright green 'Pulp Fiction' UV wig. Federico's been planning and toying with his new film Teddy Bears Live Forever for the past 2 years, capturing a sonic mess that resembles the warped feeling of destruction in Aprils own sweet bleached mind. The female psyche is deeply explored in the film, Federico spent a week filming in a single room filled with 70's Carpenters albums, ladybirds, Disney films, paintings and snakes capturing the mindset of April's fragile like glass breakdown.
Teddy Bear's has a built in mythology, the idea of paradise lost. Ancient mythical allegorical lands like Arcadia, Atlantis and April's titanic memories of her disembodied identity, it's weird and just plain heartwarming.
April's dream like sense of living in limbo, after retreating into an imaginary worldwithout a place and purpose, is indulged by her old fashioned 60's Carnaby Street grandfather, but her multiple personality disorder keeps her isolated from the world; re-living her faded out unreachable past. ''The film was also inspired by the Fibonacci sequence, UFO's and men with a strong feminine side such as Kurt Cobain and the tormented but brilliant missing guitarist Richey Edwards.''
The films shades of greatness is best summed up by Federico and his enthusiasm for misrule cinema ''learning how to make a feature film nurtures independence, confidence and staying power. But it also free's your imagination and passion for making a connection with something beyond everyday drudgery.'' Q: What Nirvana song, comes to mind when watching Teddy Bears Live Forever? A: Id say it's best summed up by 'Rape Me' & 'Come As You Are' I grew up with him, I learnt a lot from Kurt when no one else could reach me.
Step into the fun house where music, cinema and the occult finally mix. The music itself is wonderfully perverse: a languid but steadily building Middle Eastern-sounding drone, festooned with evil chanting, tabla, screaming mellotron, a sonically shifting low frequency foreboding ambience and shimmering 12-string guitar work. It’s a mad, diabolical symphony of beautiful evil; a fascinating piece of unconventional aggressively avant-garde music from one of the rock era’s most mysterious living legends, so intertwined in mysticism that he even sent an assistant out to Egypt to buy the 'Stele of Ankh-ef-en-khonsu'. The stele is also known as the "Stele of Revealing" and is a central element of the religious philosophy Thelema founded by Aleister Crowley. In Rolling Stone’s December 2012 cover story “Jimmy Page Looks Back,” Page said “...there was a request, suggesting that Lucifer Rising should come out again with my music on. I ignored it.”
Guitar World: There was always a certain amount of speculation about your occult studies. It may have been subtle, but you weren’t really hiding it.
Page: I was living it. That’s all there is to it. It was my life – that fusion of magick and music.
Guitar World: Your use of symbols was very advanced. The sigil on Led Zeppelin IV and the embroidery on your stage clothes from that time period are good examples on how you left your mark on popular culture. It’s something that major corporations are aggressively pursuing these days: using symbols as a form of branding.
Page: You mean talismanic magick? Yes, I knew what I was doing. There’s no point in saying much about it, because the more you discuss it, the more eccentric you appear to be. But the fact is – as far as I was concerned – it was working, so I used it. But it’s really no different than people who wear ribbons around their wrists: it’s a talismanic approach to something.
Young filmmaker Fabrizio Federico says the music and Lucifer Risings feel have been a big influence on his new film Loon, ''I think the vibe that they came across is phenomenal, it's eerie and exotically fascinating in that it feels evil. It's a very heavy creation, it's a beast. One day when I get a chance I'm going to replace Bobby Beausoleil's soundtrack and replace it with Jimmy's, he'd like that, him and Kenneth should make peace before it's too late.''
Being able to picture Jimmy in the dark at Aleister Crowley's haunted Boleskine House creating this music has always fascinated in that it feels so dark and hypnotic like a cobra. Where was this different music coming from, in 1972-73 with the speed of Zeppelin's ascent the adrenaline of success mixed with Jimmy's 'Do what though wilt'' evocation on the groove-out to Led Zeppelin III seems to have done the trick. But this music was different to what Page was recording with Led Zeppelin.
Page's soundtrack was finally released in 2012 after decades of it being a sought after prize and one of Led Zeppelin's biggest bootleg's to own. It's the type of album you put on before an Eyes Wide Shut naked virgin scene as she lies down on the alter and the ceremony begins.
At 31 minutes the soundtrack is a short and sweet spell, entrancing the listener mere seconds into it's first peculiar Moroccan drone, similar to some of Brian Jones's experiments in 1967 on The Rolling Stones 'Satanic Majesties Request' album inspired by the Master Musicians of Joujouka in Morocco and their pipes of pan goat sacrifice.
Page in his home studio
The band Mao on Federico's soundtrack for Loon taps into this pagan/kashmir atmosphere. ''I recorded the guitar parts at Boleskine House, I had my walkman on with the backing tracks playing along and brought my portable guitar amp into the house and recorded in the burnt bedroom with the pentagram mattress on the floor, which was used as an ouji board by local kids. Then I recorded in the hallway which is still sublime. At one point the toilet flushed by it's self, you can hear it on the mix. I recorded the guitar into my mobile phone, smoked some weed and it's some of the most supernatural music I've ever played.''
Director Fabrizio Federico
Eventually Page’s music escaped in 1981—probably sourced from the magnetic track from an early 23-minute-long “to be continued” print of Lucifer Risingthat Anger showed potential investors (I’ve seen this, it’s pretty incredible)—when it hit the bootleg market as “Solo Performances by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant,” a limited edition LP with a green wax seal. Another blue vinyl version was released in a Kabbalistically numbered limited edition.Better quality digital versions started making the rounds on torrent trackers around 2005 and last year Jimmy Page released the music he’d composed for Anger’s film via his website on very limited edition red vinyl that sold out instantly.
Fascinated with combining mysticism and on-location recordings filmmaker Fabrizio Federico's debut album 'Graveyard Music' by MAO was recorded at many notorious locations over the year such as Aleister Crowley's abandoned Boleskine house near Loch Ness, this music falls to earth as a broken star child, both mystical and beautiful, but most worryingly - cursed. Unable or not wanting to create any solidly structured compositions, other then the skydiving 'Geronimo' and the disturbed despair of 'Witchfinger Magick' the album consists mostly of atmospheric free-form instrumentals that see Federico drift through a number of different spectral moods. From calm melancholia to intense anxiety, mirroring an unbalanced state that further adds to the haunting nature of this album which is featured in the movie Loon.
''One song was inspired by a phone call I had from a lost friend who was going through a breakup because of their families sabotaging their relationship to the point of it being irreparable. After the phone call I drank some Ayahuasca and just played and played...''.
Mixing desert beats and occult guitar scales, it's a dream like album of soundscapes, skits & alien experimentation sounding very much like a journey into dark emotions or an electric mass. Probably best described as a malevolent take on psychedelic rock with a sinister undercurrent of the 60's dream.
Depending on who's listening it's either a mess or a modern masterpiece. A magpie of international shades, his films and music have never compromised over the years ''I've never been the sort of person who can schmooze and play the game, in the long run that's just a waste of time''. The albums centerpiece is 'Catcher In The Rye'', this schizophrenic piece spirals out of control early on, never before has a piece come so close to capturing the sound of a mental breakdown's levels of delicacy, from ecstasy to the oblivion of finally reaching bliss after surviving the nightmare. Other highlights include 'The Supernatural' which conveys Federico's guitar playing, rooted in the blues but shinning in space. Essentially a snapshot of the guitarist's mental state while recording the album (carrying graveyard soil in his guitar case, lighting black candles and recording the solos on his phone at locations such as Boleskine, Beachy Head and Manningtree) to capture and play along with these Vicodin atmospheres. Federico then moved to Hungary where he hit rock bottom following an accident involving boiling water. In Budapest he then started work on his upcoming film Loon. 'The films were just experiments in turning the trivial into art, I prefer everyday life experiences, mass produced feelings and sub-cultural movements, non of it matters really''. That sweet lovable fallibility much warmer then any of the mere 'icons' is charming, but can also make him as maddening as a close friend.
Director Fabrizio Federico has unveiled his new band called Mao. With an album in the pipeline of mind bending styles and experimentations its bound to be as wild as his feature film debut Black Biscuit.
