Italian occult psychedelia: where to start

Italian occult psychedelia is a loose scene of Italian bands and projects that mix psychedelic rock, krautrock, post-rock, 1970s Italian progressive rock and library music, with dark and ritual atmospheres. It is one of the Italian sounds we follow most closely.

In short

• The name: coined by the journalist Antonio Ciarletta in the Italian magazine Blow Up, in January 2012.
• The sound: psychedelia, krautrock, drones and library music, often with tape, field recordings and percussion.
• The imagery: Italian genre cinema and its soundtracks, and the ritual, esoteric folklore of the South.
• The labels: Boring Machines, Yerevan Tapes, NO=FI Recordings.
• The festival: Thalassa, in Rome, since 2013.

Where the name comes from

The term was coined by Antonio Ciarletta in an article for Blow Up in January 2012, to describe a group of Italian bands that shared a sound and an imagery more than a city or a label. The imagery comes from Italian genre films of the 1970s, horror, cannibal and western, and their soundtracks, and from the violent, esoteric folklore described in the essays of the anthropologist Ernesto De Martino and in the documentaries of Luigi Di Gianni.

The artists

These are the names in our catalogue, with the labels we link them to:

• Father Murphy: Boring Machines.
• Mai Mai Mai: Boring Machines, Yerevan Tapes.
• Heroin in Tahiti: Yerevan Tapes.
• Cannibal Movie: Yerevan Tapes.
• La Piramide di Sangue: Boring Machines.
• Squadra Omega: Boring Machines.
• Mamuthones: Boring Machines.
• Gianni Giublena Rosacroce: Yerevan Tapes.
• Maria Violenza and In Zaire.

The labels

Boring Machines was founded in 2006 by Onga, in Veneto, with a taste for discomfort, long meditations and psychedelic states; every release is hand-assembled in recycled paper. Yerevan Tapes, from Bologna, releases dark and esoteric music on cassette and vinyl. NO=FI Recordings is an independent label from Rome, behind the compilation The Thalassa Tapes.

Where to hear it live

The Thalassa festival has been held in Rome since 2013 to bring the scene together. For single nights, see our agenda; for the wider family, see the wave and post-punk sound among our sounds.