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alm 71
bad sector
"raw data"
30 march 2011

photography : delphine ancelle-b.

active for almost twenty years, massimo magrini/bad sector has a solid discography with many releases on respected labels such as old europa cafe, waystyx, drone records, afe records or blade records.
recorded in 2006, these short tracks were originally released as an interactive webpage in 2007. they were remastered and re-shaped especially for this 3" in january 2010.
massimo says about "raw data": "the goal was to create interesting soundscapes that have no link to human manufacts/intentions: they just sound like directly recorded from sort of special, non musical device. only apparently cold, their macrostructure is so complex that a top-level macrostructure is totally unnecessary".

tracklisting :
1. alpha
2. beta
3. gamma
4. delta
5. epsilon
6. zeta
7. eta
8. theta
9. iota
10. kappa
11. lambda

reviews :

Vital Weekly
Bad Sector has been going for some twenty years now and had a lot of releases on labels as Old Europa Cafe, Waystyx and Drone. Although sometimes placed among the industrialists of a darker kind, I always thought the music of Bad Sector (the brainchild of Massimo Magrini) was quite interesting. The pieces here, eleven in total, were first released on an interactive website, but remastered for this release. It seems to be entirely made from computer data, and have a cold clinical feel, with a great dynamics in sound. Deep bass sounds, high end frequencies, looped around, seemingly without much story. Cold but fascinating stuff. Things bump and collide, and then disappear as black holes. [...] (FdW)

Textura
A new trio of three-inch CD-Rs from the taâlem imprint includes field recordings-based soundscaping from d'incise and Final Cut and a collection of abstract vignettes from Bad Sector (Massimo Magrini). An unusual affair, the eleven tracks on the latter's Raw Data were recorded in 2006, then released as an interactive webpage in 2007, and have now been remastered and re-shaped for the taâlem release. In Magrini's own words: “The goal was to create interesting soundscapes that have no link to human manufacts/intentions: they just sound like directly recorded from sort of special, non-musical device. Only apparently cold, their macrostructure is so complex that a top-level macrostructure is totally unnecessary.” Each of the eleven pieces is precisely two minutes in length (and titled “Alpha,” “Beta,” “Gamma,” “Delta,” etc.), and each flickers and percolates for its allotted time before politely stepping aside to allow the next setting to take over. All manner of electrical combustion (“Lambda”) and whirr-and-click (“Zeta”) shows up during the release, and one track's pulsations could even pass for Cluster (“Eta”) while another's chirp and flutter suggests a wild orgy at the micro-organic level (“Epsilon”). [...]

Music Emissions
"The goal was to create interesting soundscapes that have no link to human manufacts/intentions: they just sound like directly recorded from sort of special, non musical device. Only apparently cold, their macrostructure is so complex that a top-level macrostructure is totally unnecessary". So says Massimo Magrini, the prime mover behind bad sector. "raw data" is the product of that goal.
Originally released in 2007 for an interactive webpage, "raw data" is a series of eleven short transmissions (with titles like "alpha," ‘beta," "gamma," ‘iota," etc), which vary from light industrial to radio-like frequencies with slight tonal variations or added glitches and pulses. Overall, this is pretty laconic and non-evasive, meditative but this set is easily monotonous if you don't stay with it. Distraction is not this 3"'s friend.
For fans of electronic music, "raw data" offers more brooding minimalism from one of the best artists in the genre, one who has been recording and performing for quite some time. For the casual listener, bad sector does not provide easy or, depending on your taste, any listening. I fall on the former side, and as a fan of the genre, I found this to be a competent, if not too challenging, sonic effort. (Mike Wood)

Culture Is Not Your Friend
The year 2005 saw the birth of “Death Odors III” through the label “Slaughter Productions” by the late Marco Corbelli. The third track on that compilation album, and the one that I remember the most, was by Bad Sector, with sharp beats that gave out the fetid feeling that suited the albums concept so well. Now I encounter this project once again, after a long time, through Raw Data, a mini album by Taalem records, which goes even further into the bleak atmosphere that I remembered from the last decade.
Raw Data is composed from eleven short tracks, each lasting 2:00 minutes. Originally, these tracks were a part of an interactive web page, when they were reassembled, reshaped and remastered into their final form that is presented here. The most noticeable feature in this album is the dirty digital cuts, breaking the sick drones that crawl from the speakers. These clicks and cuts are the thing that makes this album so disturbing and powerful, having sinister presence over the haunting, unsettling music. As the album progresses, the sounds get tenser and through the eleven stages of this album you can feel how Bad Sector is making a move on your spinal chord, almost pulling it out of your body with his bare hands.
Being an expert in sick, deathly industrial ambient, Massimo Magrini of Bad Sector does not fail to deliver another powerful and unsettling album. Taalem offers yet another great release, tainted with uncanny, disturbed and distressing tones that make it even better than before.