*2023 stock* CD in 4-panel, full-color gatefold digisleeve. Cover artwork and foreword by Roberto Opalio. Design by My Cat Is An Alien.

‘The Sky With Broken Arms’ is the brand new studio album by My Cat Is An Alien which officially opens the duo’s 20th anniversary in 2018–a year rich of exciting projects, collaborations and releases. Brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio have been active as radical instantaneous composers since the beginning in early 1998, their work always characterized by the willingness to challenge oneself and throw oneself forward towards the unknown realms of art, intended as the highest projection and expression of the self. This ongoing, imperative challenge brought MCIAA’s musical research towards constant innovation, making each of their 200+ musical releases a step onward, and their entire opus simply unique. “There are few other artists who have been so unwaveringly challenging and iconoclastic for as long as the Opalios" (Brainwashed). The deep authenticity of their sound has always shined throughout the large number of collaborations set up during the years with vanguards such as Sonic Youth, Jim O’Rourke, Keiji Haino, Christian Marclay, Mats Gustafsson, Jean-Marc Montera, Z’ev, Nels Cline, Enore Zaffiri, Loren Connors, among many others. MCIAA’s rare live performances mirror the brothers’ vision of the creative act as the most powerful shamanic ritual, bringing together their performative action with the diverse aspects of their intermedia activities like the “cinematic poetry” films by Roberto Opalio. Their idiosyncratic improvising skill and extraordinary psychic connection have been under the radar of thousands of visitors during the opening days of the 57th Venice Art Biennale in May 2017, when MCIAA activated the Studio Venezia project at the French Pavilion invited by artist Xavier Veilhan and curator Christian Marclay.

“This latest opus from the Opalio brothers continues their restlessly experimental hot streak, taking inspiration from a characteristically bizarre event: two years ago, Roberto discovered that a bunch of his records were corroded by an "inexplicable oxidation process." After some time, he decided to listen to one of them anyway and found himself fascinated by the way the listening experience was transformed by the surface noise. Naturally, the instantaneous composition that resulted from that revelation is considerably more bizarre and idiosyncratic than a mere celebration of crackle and hiss, but the added layer of noise beautifully adds an evocative textural layer to The Sky With Broken Arms' sublime and eerily otherworldly reverie.

Every now and then, I come across an album that has uncannily perfect cover art that not only conveys exactly the tone of the album, but seems to exist as an absolutely crucial part of the whole. The Sky With Broken Arms is one such album, as Roberto Opalio's blurred and mysterious photograph of a tree and a streetlight is a window into the similarly blurred and mysterious world that this blearily languorous longform piece inhabits. 

If this album were a movie, it would be a grainy home video of a sleepy rural town at night: the streets are empty, the one stoplight gently sways in the wind, and the church bell in the center of town hollowly resonates, announcing the time. Something is not quite right, however, as the bell continues to calmly ring again and again long after it has passed any possible earthy hour: time seems to have either frozen, slowed, or gotten stuck in an endlessly looping moment. Also, the bell is not the only sound, as the very air itself seems to have come alive with a crackle that resembles the sparking of a downed power line. And it sounds like a nearby radio has suddenly come to life as well and is now picking up mysterious, swooping transmissions from unknown sources. In fact, it seems like the entire town has been completely enveloped in some kind of unexplained electromagnetic disturbance and I seem to be the only one awake to witness it. Characteristically, things only get stranger from that point, as The Sky With Broken Arms is essentially just one long, slow descent into escalating weirdness. First, Maurizio’s queasily rippling guitars make it feel like reality is dissolving into a dizzying fever dream. Then, Roberto’s spectral vocals start to creep over the piece like a dense, lysergic fog. Or like a sickly green light emanating from a UFO hovering right above the town. Needless to say, there is nothing else on earth quite like this album (or like My Cat Is An Alien). Ostensibly, this is music, but that feels like a hopelessly reductive term for the transcendent, reality-disrupting spell that the Opalios cast. This album is roughly as disorienting as unexpectedly waking up in another dimension. Or at the bottom of the sea.

A new MCIAA album is never just a fresh batch of songs—it is both a legitimate event and an invitation to share the Opalios' hermetic, otherworldly headspace for a brief time. Notably, that headspace is never the same twice, as the Opalios' music is an evolving ritual. It is quite remarkable how the brothers are able endlessly combine and rearrange their unconventional and minimal sound palette into new experiences with their own distinct personalities. Some albums are like a deep trance, some are like an extradimensional nightmare, some are like a plunge into the subconscious, and some make me feel like I am losing my goddamn grip on sanity. This one is a bit different, as it feels like living inside an especially haunting and surreal episode of The Twilight Zone.” – Anthony D’Amico