Desolation and Radiation

The shadowy twang of electric guitars, the dusty spectral melodies, the driving orchestral timpani, the rural instruments like banjo, harmonica & mouth harp … these are the elements with which DESOLATION AND RADIATION scores a mythic western of the future. Italy's Alessandro Mercanzin imagines a visionary dystopia where a solitary figure navigates an inhospitable post-nuclear desert. It’s a hypnotic land of cold haunted nights, lonely red vistas and somber personal solitude.

Alex reflects, "DESOLATION AND RADIATION is a wordless vision of a lost world from the future. To me it's melancholy, filled with lost dreams. With a ghostly sound in my mind, I wanted to pull off dark intriguing riffs, and I found I could say a lot of things with a few whispered notes from my guitars. These songs paint dramatic scenes that take me to a reverb-drenched wasteland in a parallel world."

Aided by producer Maurizio Baggio (recently producing Soft Moon, Boy Harsher, & Nuovo Testamento) Alex plays with genres including the Giallo-pulp that scored his personal musical evolution while toying, avoiding and embracing the clichés of Italian Spaghetti Westerns. The adventurous sound of the album is coaxed from various guitars, vintage instruments, reverbs, and the marranzanu (a traditional Sicilian harp.) Alex plays most of the instruments and is augmented by Maurizio’s vintage synths and old 60s organs, Michele Tedesco’s trumpets on "Nowhere to Ride," and Stefano Miozzo’s pedal steel guitar on "Far from Here.”

In the end, DESOLATION AND RADIATION has its veiled message: a warning to prevent the mistakes of the past from transforming our present into a terrifying future.