My Cat Is an Alien

My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA) is an Italian musical duo and outsider audiovisual artist consisting of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, formed in Turin, Italy, in late 1997. The band releases avant garde / experimental music in a form of improvisation that MCIAA themselves define 'instantaneous composition'. Italy's MY CAT IS AN ALIEN is the finest two-brother band from Italy since the end of the Great War. In September 2011, My Cat Is An Alien was the cover feature in The Wire magazine. Tony Herrington, editor-in-chief & publisher of The Wire, characterizes the duo as Roberto and his brother Maurizio are the highly advanced lifeforms crewing the mysterious starship that goes by the name of My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA), plotting a quixotic course through three millennia of cosmic music, from the celestial drones of the Pythagorean monochord onwards, to land up in the gravity-free realm of the No-mind The group has a large number of albums and side project material which is widely available on CDs, LPs and digital downloads released by the labels Atavistic (USA), Important (USA), Very Friendly/ Cargo (UK), P.S.F. (Japan), and Elliptical Noise (CAN) among many others. All MCIAA's album covers come from paintings, drawings and photographs by Roberto Opalio. Since artwork is a basic aspect of every record, MCIAA often release limited art edition vinyls, lathe cuts, cassettes, CD-Rs and DVD-Rs on their own Opax Records imprint, and other independent record labels. In their early years, MCIAA made all recordings in the 'Space Room', the duo's first studio, located in an abandoned factory zone to the north of Turin city centre. As expression of their DIY aesthetics they self-released many limited CD-Rs during that period. MCIAA's international debut album Landscapes Of An Electric City/ Hypnotic Spaces 3-sided LP on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace! label in 2002 earned high marks from Dusted Magazine (volcanic, both in sound quality and seeping magnitude…floating, impressionistic noise.") and Bananafish Magazine, and a special mention on the book Post Rock (Giunti). From 2004 MCIAA put out three consecutive vinyl releases on Eclipse Records—The Rest Is Silence (2004), When The Windmill's Whirl Dies (2005), and Greetings From The Great Void (2006)— later intended as a trilogy. Another concept album collecting some of their most remarkable ambient, instrumental works, The Cosmological Eye Trilogy, was published as a 3 CD set on Last Visible Dog Records and awarded as "BEST 2005 ANTHOLOGY" by Foxy Digitalis, hereby introduced by editor-in-chief Brad Rose: As 2005 went on, I became a bigger and bigger My Cat Is An Alien fan. This Italian brother-duo are cosmic travellers, giving us earthlings a taste of stellar dust. This 3 CD set is absolutely essential. A pile of music to reach the summit of Olympus Mons, missing this would be an absolute crime. After other key works such as Il Segno (Starlight Furniture Co., 2003), and Through The Reflex Of The Rain (Free Porcupine Society, 2005), in 2005 Important Records started releasing some albums that were met with praise by critics and contemporaries alike—Cosmic Light Of The Third Millennium (2005), Leave Me In The Black No-Thing (2007), For The Tears Of The Land_Prayers From The Outer Space (2009), Roberto Opalio's soloist debut Chants From Isolated Ghosts (2007), and an untitled limited split vinyl LP of solo works by the two brothers (2009)— This is highly original music.You can get lost inside its minimal, limpid beauty. claimed Ed Pinsent, editor & publisher of The Sound Projector Magazine. Different Shades Of Blue, published by defunct label A Silent Place in 2006, has been awarded album of 2005 in the Top 30 chart "THE BEST OF AMBIENT WORKS 1978-2008" by the prestigious Studio Voice multi-media magazine and book publications in Japan. In 2005 the Opalio brothers moved their recording studio from Turin to a remote and secret location in the Western Alps they call 'Alien Zone', where Roberto introduced his wordless vocalizations as a leading instrument. In this regard English writer Ken Hollings, author of MCIAA cover article in The Wire, states: Less a celestially pure tone than a cosmic moan, his brother's [Roberto] vocals find a distant echo in Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was The Night Cold Was The Ground, recorded on Earth back in 1927 but currently making its way through deep space aboard Voyager as part of its collection of human music. From the vastness of the Alpine territory, the brothers released new key works, including Black Shadows From Jupiter, Vol.I & II (Opax Records, 2005 / Elliptical Noise, 2009), Photoelectric Season (Elliptical Noise, 2010), and Fragments Suspended In Time (Opax Records, 2010). Starting from 2009, most of their new albums are published by their devoted Canadian label Elliptical Noise Records, that in 2011 put out the triple CD set What Space Is Made For, whose track The Antigravitational Sense Of Nothingness is featured in Wire Tapper 25 CD Compilation accompanying The Wire magazine No. 326 (April 2011). In 2008 My Cat Is An Alien also signed for Atavistic Worldwide. On September 14, 2011 My Cat Is An Alien's first thirteen years of activity were celebrated with ALIENOLOGY: Selected Works 1998-2008, a ten disc box retrospective published by Elliptical Noise. My Cat Is An Alien have multimedia collaborations with acts such as Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Christian Marclay, Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Nels Cline (Wilco), Text of Light, Steve Roden, Christina Carter (Charalambides), Mats Gustafsson, Enore Zaffiri and many more. In July 2004 MCIAA started a project of collaboration with some of these artists in the form of two series of special split Art-LP releases (later re-issued on CD) entitled From the earth to the Spheres (7 volumes) and Cosmic Debris (5 volumes), which have been acclaimed as some of the most original publications in the record history, every vinyl copy coming along a proper 30x30 cm acrylic painting on canvas or wood panels, in the latter series with the addition of installed Polaroid films. Roberto Opalio realized every volume in 100 unique exemplars, individually signed and numbered. The From the earth to the Spheres series has been awarded 2004's “Avant Rock Top 10" by The Wire. Italian DIY space rockers My Cat Is An Alien’s rampant release schedule continues to attract Sun Ra worshippers to their cause. The production takes on the mantle of a release from Saturn. wrote Edwin Pouncey (The Wire), The creative concept behind the Opalio brothers' ongoing From the earth to the Spheres series of dual recordings featuring guest artists is somewhat reminiscent of the ESP-Disk mantra. At the beginning of 2008 My Cat Is An Alien were introduced to Italian pioneer of electronic music Enore Zaffiri (at the time 80 years old). In February, the trio recorded some completely improvised material, with Zaffiri re-working some of his reel-to-reel tapes from the 1960s. Despite their opposite methods in composing music, a strong musical connection is documented by this session released by Atavistic in the CD+DVD set entitled Through The Magnifying Glass Of Tomorrow (2009), also featuring two art films: Trasparenze (by Zaffiri) and Light_Earth_Blue_Silver (by Roberto Opalio, with soundtrack by MCIAA). In 2008, Roberto Opalio and My Cat Is An Alien were invited by Sonic Youth to take part in Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix exhibition. At the opening at LiFE museum in St-Nazaire, France, MCIAA joined Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) for a special live music performance collaboration, along with Michael Morley (Dead C), and Opalio's close collaborator Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petals On Planet Ghost), later released by Starlight Furniture Co. in a limited vinyl edition—Live @ Sensational Fix, 2009. Later that year, a further collaborative live event with Lee Ranaldo occurred in Verona, Italy, this time close to the