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| Christina in Bali |
The final video released from Clandestine Anticipation by Christina and Maurizio is for the jaw-dropping opening track of this album, Miami. Before Radiohead created “Idioteque”, before 2 Live Crew even thought about bumpin’ the bass on old electro records, before tons of EDM or noise bands forgot their roots in dance music…existed this predatory dance monster. Over a bloopy odd-time signature drum machine rhythm, one of the best bass lines/drops ever laid down by mere mortals steps out of its shadow. This start-stop bass groove, sounds like nothing of its time and foretells what will lay ahead. The track builds itself like a MOAB, first Maurizio sends in a droning synth that zeroes in exactly where the bass can’t reach you, then Christina touches down with her dense vocals nearly echoing around the whole track, pushing it to its limits. Once the sonic walls are breached, the track explodes and does the equivalent of musical fission, building itself anew differently from the same ingredients.
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| Maurizio on Miami set |
The video itself, filmed on the beaches of Bali, is a brilliant mashup of veiled symbolism and anti-surveillance imagery. Maurizio plays the role of a hired hitman going after the fully cognizant Christina. Who is going after who? the video posits. For such an intense track, the choice to use such a sun lit place seems on the face of it entirely inappropriate, but then you start to see the videos getting spliced in between, of people fighting in once distant jungles. There is something tactful about showing this kind of strife, the one that goes out in the open, in broad daylight…during the light of day. I mean, sometimes the densest, most provocative sights and sounds aren’t the ones that one would experience in the shadows of life. Krisma this time found exactly what they were looking for, all they had to do was get out of their own shadow.
I’ll attempt to tackle this concept and bring a close to my retrospective of this brilliant, forgotten Italian duo tomorrow…