LE FORBICI DI MANITU

PLAY & REMIX

LIEUTENANT MURNAU (1980-1984)

Earthly Delights / Soleilmoon, 1999 CD £11

IN THE BEGINNING: In early January of 1984, at the end of a carefully mapped out four-year plan, the question of the existence or non existence of the musical entity called Lieutenant Murnau was finally answered. Beginning in 1980, news of concerts, performances, recorded works of this mysterious group was heard constantly in Italy. There were cassettes, records and other commonly available release, but the sounds that came out of them were strangely difficult to trace back to any known origin. Clearly some were lifted from pre-existing sources, or recovered from obscure storage locations, but they were always displaced and reassembled in ways that only raised questions about who was operating behind those sounds, and why and how they made them. During these four years of non-existant existance Lt. Murnau's operations came to involve many bizarre and creative people who found their way into the functioning of this non-entity entity. Then, in 1984, the doubts were solved: Lt. Murnau ceased to exist.

TEN YEARS LATER: in 1994, Vittore Baroni, the basic conspirator behind this pioneering plagiarist project, was asked by Nigel Ayers to assemble an anthology of Lt. Murnau's materials for a retrospective CD to be released by Earthly Delights. Vittore asked the other two members of Le Forbici di Manitu, the musical group he was part of at the time, if they could assist him with this assemblage. They accept his invitation, but quickly discovered that a simple compilation would be untrue to Lt Murnau's original spirit. John Oswald, Negativland, Christian Marclay, and all dance musicians using samplers have in recent years made plagiarism a controversial but widely recognized artistic movement. The basic Lt. Murnau process, to recycle and alchemically transform the materials of the aural landscape of our past and present history, was applied to the original Lt. Murnau tapes, which were edited, spliced together, sampled, completely re-created, and boldly reinvented. This process deeply satisfied Le Forbici's taste for the eclectic, conceptual, raw and extremely refined.

NOW: Fall 1999. The tribute/anthology about the mysterious Lt. Murnau is finally completed and Le Forbici di Manitu are very proud about what they feel is their most complete musical statement yet. It is as varied, beautiful, and, at times, utterly unbearable as any memorable record worth its reputation. Exotic soundtrack music, expressionist radio dramas, power electronic ballads, wild sampling, grooves and stolen voices, fake funk, barren landscapes, pop debris... you name it, in the 74 minutes of the record you have it. And don't forget to properly program your CD-player to reassemble and hear the complete "Do the Murnau" dance-anthem.