Massimo Pupillo - My Own Private Afghanistan (IMP114)

*Pre-Order* ships May 19th 2023
300 copies.

Massimo Pupillo (Ostia - Roma) is a bass and double bass player and composer. Best known for being the bassist of Zu, which produced bio 15 albums with labels like Atavistic / Touch n 'Go (USA), Southern (EU), Heads (JAPAN), Ipecac Records (USA), TROST(AT) and numerous singles and split with other labels.
Pupillo has worked with everyone from Stephen O'Malley and Jim O'Rourke to Mick Harris and Mike Patton.

'My Own Private Afghanistan' is his new 40 minute opus, an incredible alien soundtrack, a blend of resonant wails, sacred vocal chants, chattering television news recordings, low end wobbles and eerie vinyl noise, it tells a gripping sonic narrative from beginning to end.

Bologna's Home Movies Foundation commissioned me to soundtrack a private film, shot in Afghanistan in 1969 by Anna Bavicchi, the daughter of an Italian diplomat. The innocence of those images, imbued with a very rich culture, which after a while was devastated by repeated wars, informed a work in which the foreboding of "perpetual war" acts as an emotional background. This work grew over weeks and then months and then years , becoming an obsession, a heartfelt meditation on the continuous state of war, on planet earth, and in our souls. The concept that guided me is that of "Wetiko", a word used by Native Americans to describe a mental virus that takes over the human mind, and spreads. A word they used for the behavior of white men, incomprehensible to them. It is beautifully described in a book calld Wetiko by Paul Levy. Never becoming a literal soundtrack, this work presents a continuous reversal of the narrative planes, from commentary to contrast. The fulcrum, however, is in the emotionality that has arisen, almost as if this documentary presented me with a personal issue to solve. The equivalent of a Zen Koan. Hence and with a little grain of irony, the title I gave to this work is: My Own Private Afghanistan.