Review

Twoonky

Ottico

Macadam Mambo • 2023

The world is spinning faster and faster, and since the clubs reopened after the pandemic, musical acceleration has also found its way onto the dance floor. Will there be time for some convoluted downtempo? One of the labels that would confirm this with a tantalisingly slow nod is Macadam Mambo by – with the emphasis on confusedly – operator Sacha Mambo. He also enlisted Italian duo Twoonky for another album after »Dezzo« in 2019 and, what can I say, the brothers from Brescia deliver what you hoped. From the very first second, the twisted sounds square the circle, something for which acts in the Salon des Amateurs would be questioned about their sanity. True to the motto »a lot helps a lot«, Michele and Simone Bornati seem to have used as many sound generators as they could find for the eight tracks: At the very least, sampling, analogue, digital effects and reverberators were used, which was inevitably bound to culminate in a peculiar mixture of artistic ambition, crude dilettantism and humour. »Enciclopedico«, with its hypnotic tinkering beat, distant synths and quirky cartoon samples, is a perfect example of this. At what point is an elephant trumpet no longer an end in itself, but a cleverly planted message? Do Twoonky know the answer? Do they even care? In any case, the jamming continues.