Atrax Morgue - From Degeneration To Degeneration 12xCS box set

Following on the back of their stunning, expansive reissues of Atrax Morguereleased in the last years, Urashima returns with “From degeneration to degeneration”, an astounding 12 cassette box set, fully authorized, mastered from the original tapes,  dedicated to the early works of the artist. Housed in one beautiful black wooden box editions 12inch size – containing reissue of complete Slaughter Productions tapes titles – it’s easily one of the most ambitious releases ever dedicated to haunting, deeply emotive, and creatively radical acts, culminating as a tour-de-force survey of Corbelli’s remarkably diverse vision within the industrial and noise scene. Box set comes with a 40 pages book with original credits from every cassette release and Marco Corbelli’s pics with some completely new shots, two A4 size inserts glossy coating with two unpublished Marco Corbelli ‘self-portraits and never seen before, one postcard with unpublished Atrax Morgue self -inflicted wound pose, an official certificate hand numbered with gold ink in 99 copies and a big poster with Marco Corbelli iconic picture with target in its original and complete pose plus download code for digital audio. Mind-blowing and space-expanding, an absolute spectacular object.

Marco Corbelli’s artistic journey began in the early 90’s. Under the pseudonym of Marco Rotula, he started to release a series of fanzines in a very limited edition. The first was “The pleasure agony”, followed by “Sick” and “Murders”. Desires, pleasures, hate, and disgust are laid out and displayed for us to inspect. The aesthetics of these first fanzines were very sophisticated and the content deals with topics that will follow Marco Corbelli throughout his artistic career: sadism, schizophrenia, insanity, murder, psychosis, necrophilia, diseases, and most importantly death.

In 1993, heavily influenced by his obsessions, Marco Corbelli began his musical activities creating the legendary Slaughter Productions label  and the extremely impressive Atrax Morgue project. Greatly inspired by Italian Power Electronics act The Sodality, with their 1987 LP “Beyond Unknown Pleasures” and from projects as Whitehouse and Brighter Death Now, pioneers of a minimal, evil and visceral electronic, Atrax Morgue released his first tape “In search of death” which will be followed by a series of amazing cassettes in the following years, printed on own label. Imbued with abstraction and the bristling tension of death and noise, its subtle structures and intertwining harmonics immerse the mind in a deeply organic and hallucinatory realm that places Marco Corbelli at forefront of the field.

Tape after tape, from degeneration to degeneration, with the sole help of an analog synthesizer Sequential Circuits Six-Trak, a microphone connected with a Yamaha multi-effect, tape decks and a mixer, Marco Corbelli blows up emotions and delusions, cutting out the hard way inspired portraits of phobias and deviation. With this minimal equipment Marco has created all his shocking early cassettes, always characterized by his cold, sick and querulous synthetizer; pitch perfect for the industrial movement into which he first emerged. These aspects of his practice are particularly drawn into the light by the main manifesto of Atrax Morgue – the analysis of the death, his perfection and complete habituation: injections of death to continue to live! 

Beautifully brilliant, profoundly ambitious and crucial in constructing a more inclusive vision of Atrax Morgue’s deep, extensive work , “From degeneration to degeneration” box set represents an absolute approach to the industrial and noise scene in the  nineteens. The putrescence is palpable, and one could almost smell and taste the miasma of decay that pervades the entire box. Anxiety, alienation and hypochondria turn into a deep paranoia in pain. Without hesitation, the bodies are emptied, leaving the field to an electronics purulence of rare power disconcerting. The psychopathological sound is white, painful and horrific; creates a mental alteration that initiates brutal operation of psychic surgery, neuroses and split personality. Crosses terrifying rooms lit by neon lights, corridors filled with gruesome tools, machines of blood and bits of human tissue floating in jars of formalin. The hum of the synth, the roar of noise and fights razor are often repeated loops, where each track has a compact structure, following the main theme (of death). An absolute triumph and essential on every count for fans of Industrial and synth / experimental music and a hallucinatory and intense set of finely tuned and tectonic form pieces, and a must too for anyone even remotely interested in any form of sustained sounds and their impact on the mind.

Label: Urashima

Genre: Noise

Release: 2023