Banjo Or Freakout

As promised in my latest podcast [link], here's a post about everyone's favourite Turin-meets-Londoner Banjo Or Freakout. I featured his ace track 'Mr No' in my March podcast, calling it "tabla infused dream pop". The good people over at No Pain In Pop appear to be releasing it on a 7" this July. Good call.

Banjo Or Freakout is the alias of Alessio Natalizia, from the mean streets of Italy's Turin and now living with his girlfriend in London. He seems to arisen from nowhere, having played only a handful of live shows and dripfeeding his tracks via his very own blog [link]. Saying that, Alessio managed to attract the attention of DFA records co-founder Jon Galkin earlier this year and has also been profiled at DrownedInSound.com. Luckily for me, he added me on MySpace a few weeks ago and I was instantly impressed.

Not only had Alessio been making engaging, progressive music but he had been kind enough to share the mp3s with anyone and everyone using a blog. This was my kind of artist. As for the tracks themselves, Alessio notes that they're not always the most accessible and he often goes down the ¡Forward, Russia! route of naming them after numbers. Except his are pretty much completely random numbers. I'm posting some of his more "poppy" stuff below as well as a couple of covers that he's done lately.



While 'Mr No' is a more uptempo song (at least musically), some of the Banjo Or Freakout material is dark and almost disturbing, like 'I Will Not Kill You Now'. I think the title pretty much gives that one away, although hearing Alessio's vocal at the very end has every hint of deranged psychopath to it. I'm sure he's lovely though.

Banjo Or Freakout - I Will Not Kill You Now [Yourfilehost download link]
Banjo Or Freakout - People And Their Belongings [Yourfilehost]
Banjo Or Freakout - Foundations (Kate Nash Cover) [Yourfilehost]
Banjo Or Freakout - Atlas (Battles Cover) [Yourfilehost]

Alessio has another couple of ace covers over (as well as all the above tracks and more) at his blog, which I suggest you check out at banjoorfreakout.blogspot.com and seeing as it's unlikely I'm going to post about this band anytime soon, here's Battles with a live version of 'Atlas'.

Battles - Atlas (BBC Electric Proms 2007 Live) [Yourfilehost]//[Sendspace mirror]

I still don't really "get" Battles.