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lucio menegon | music•noise•art

Sonic Demons Review by Paper Cuts Magazine

In the Sept 2010 issue of Paper Cuts Magazine:

Title: Sonic Demons
Artist: Lucio Menegon
Label: Edgetone Records
Format: CDR
By Chad E. Williams

It’s hard sometimes to listen to instrumental music and not create movies or
stories in your head. For me that’s often the best part. Lucio Menegon’s
album “Sonic Demons” does the work for you by providing a short story in
conjunction with the music. I’ll let you discover the story on your own as I
don’t want to ruin it, but with or without this strange backdrop the album
is a beautifully executed collection of free-jazz-ish-noise and ambient
pieces that can take the listener to many unusual places.

Menegon performs on all the tracks here with his ability to mix effected
guitar with electronic and atmospheric sound elements to create a unique
aural picture. Sounds range from spacey layered guitars as in the opening
piece “Lucifer’s Meltdown” to harsher improvisations with enough squeaks and
screeching to satisfy any noise fan as on the track “Shrunken Head”.
Additional yummy layers of interest added by a fun vocal piece with Laurie
Amat (The Residents), Jonathan Segel (Camper Van Beetwhovern), the fantastic
drumming of David Grollman, guitarist John Hanes, and others. “Sonic
Demons” has a bit of something for anyone with open ears and is certainly
worth checking out and creating some fantastic dream-movies to.

(Kingtone editor corrections: John Hanes plays drums and laptop, Jonathan Segel plays with Camper van Beethoven)

Sonic Demons Press

Music Emissions. This reviewer pretty much nails my intention with Sonic Demons:

“Sonic Demons, at least if the titles represent the intent, is an instrumental exploration of the darkness we invite into us, the demons we flirt with until it is too late to send them packing. This electronic divine comedy is pulled off with grace and grit.”

“Sonic Demons would be intense and impressive without the dark night of the soul motif. With it, it allows Lucio Menegon to let it rip with purpose, a goal of exploration into the uncomfortable. He wins on all counts.” full review

Music Extreme

Experimental guitarist Lucio Menegon shows pure experimentation with sounds on this recording. Going from free jazz up to almost noise or ambient within the same composition, he shows great technical and improvisational skills. On the recording he is joined in some of the tunes by other fellow musicians that interact cleverly with Menegon´s guitar phrases. There is a strong knowledge of intensity and volume here and that is evident in many of the compositions where Menegon goes into a crescendo of sound before exploding at the end of the tune. There are good combinations of sounds with some melodies and phrases that surprise the listener. This is an album for open minded people who are into sound exploration and improvisation.
full review

Downtown Music Gallery NYC Here’s an interesting one from their weekly newsletter (btw, I’m an American citizen by birth):

LUCIO MENEGON – Sonic Demons (Edgetone 4092; USA)
Italian guitarist Lucio Menegon is currently a Bay area-based musician, as well as a friend of local drummer David Grollman, a friend of DMG who shows up almost every week for our in-store performances. Hence these live performances feature most west coast players except for Grollman, Rob Price & Valerie Kuehne. ‘Lucifer’s Meltdown” opens with a solo guitar & loops excursion that on the verge of coming apart as it throbs to an intense ending. “Shrunken Head” features Lucio & Rob Price on guitars & electronics & Dave Grollman on drums. It sounds as if there are layers electronics & static erupting together into a brooding storm. I can’t really hear the drums but the results are scary nonetheless. It is often difficult to tell that Lucio is playing guitar since the electronics and distortion is more prominent than any plucking. On “Gasping for Air” Lucio plays tortured noise guitar fractures with intense drumming of Laurie Arnat. Lucio inserts four solo guitar and/or electronics pieces in between the small group improvs and each one is different, sometimes twisting the feedback or noise sounds inside out. Each piece is quite effective yet occasionally disturbing. Overall there are some impressive bouts of well selected noise segments and it all fits together. – Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

Paper Cuts Magazine Sept 2010 issue
LUCIO MENEGON – Sonic Demons (Edgetone 4092; USA)

It’s hard sometimes to listen to instrumental music and not create movies or stories in your head. For me that’s often the best part. Lucio Menegon’s album “Sonic Demons” does the work for you by providing a short story in conjunction with the music. I’ll let you discover the story on your own as I don’t want to ruin it, but with or without this strange backdrop the album is a beautifully executed collection of free-jazz-ish-noise and ambient pieces that can take the listener to many unusual places.

Menegon performs on all the tracks here with his ability to mix effected guitar with electronic and atmospheric sound elements to create a unique aural picture. Sounds range from spacey layered guitars as in the opening piece “Lucifer’s Meltdown” to harsher improvisations with enough squeaks and screeching to satisfy any noise fan as on the track “Shrunken Head”. Additional yummy layers of interest added by a fun vocal piece with Laurie Amat (The Residents), Jonathan Segel (Camper Van Beethoven), the fantastic drumming of David Grollman, John Hanes, and others. “Sonic Demons” has a bit of something for anyone with open ears and is certainly worth checking out and creating some fantastic dream-movies to. In the Sept 2010 issue of full review

Sea of Tranquility:

Lucio Menegon is an experimental artist, guitar player and some sort of electronics wiz. He gathered a bunch of guest artists to add “improvisational” elements to his journey.

This type of “music” is a bit hard to appreciate and is not for everybody, neither is it the thing you’ll most likely spin at any time. I found the compositions mostly cohesive in their own experimental way. Off course improvised parts came into play to bring touches of surprises and variation. Some of this music carries an ambient feel, while other parts are more psychedelic or even totally hectic. I can feel inspiration coming from bands of the seventies like: Egg, King Crimson and the Mothers of Invention. I can hear Dave Stewart going nuts over the tone generator in a few instances, such as on ” Shrunken Head” and “Experiments with the Force”. Ian Underwood seems to be “wipping it all” on the sax in “Shrunken Head”, while the hectic drumming of the Mothers is quite present on: “Resident Tourette” and “Killing Green”. Lucio’s guitar playing is pretty un-orthodox too. He deliberately de-tunes his guitar in some way unknown to me, in a number of places. Examples of this could be heard on “The Debigulator” and “Vulcan’s Wish”. My personal favorite tunes are: “Lucifer’s Melt Down: (dark/psychedelic) , as well as tracks 10 to 12, namely “Vulcan’s Wish”, ” Scattered Brain” and “Sonic Demons”.