10 tracks, 54 minutes

Listen to: “Smooth Fried Tk2”
Reviews of “Free Pulse”
Release date: February 22, 2005

Sinistri manifesto
I.
Giving up the intention is the preliminary condition, only the silence is unintentional. The sound is a condition of the silence, the silence is a condition of the time. We play the silences that wrap around and lie within the sounds. Playing amplified music is taking away sounds to the noise rather than adding sounds to silence. The technique's root is the instantaneous intuition, the discipline requires the destruction of ego, the musical form comes out from a process.
II.
You don't have to confuse music with sonology, the main point in music is the time, not the sound. Our music is not constituted from different sounds distributed in a uniform time, but from a single sound that bounces in multiples time. In other words, all the sounds are the same sound, vibrating a countless amount of times, in the state in which all the times are present. (music is the time that exceeds itself)

About our music (music beyond ego)
In a certain way we play concrete music, but we don't use bruitism or pure electronic - that is "non-musical" material - to make music, we use elements and techniques from rock music tradition as source material to make "non-music". We take away each elements of expressiveness from music properly "expressive" as rock or blues, giving a "neutral objectivity" to music styles that, by definition, are never "objective". We don't operate the deduction of meaning through mechanical or digital process, but through a discipline that allowing us to give up our ego.

Sinitri
Sinistri, formerly known as Starfuckers, is an experimental music unit based in Italy. Starting from an original, raw, minimal and high power approach to the rock language, they soon developed a personal direction exploring the space between proto-punk, black roots and contemporary classical music. Sinistri is a trio who uses electric, electronic and acoustic instruments, operating under the principles of intuitive music, exploiting asyncrony and non-metrical rhythms. Sinistri's music comes out from an evolving process and appears like a steady aperiodic pulsation which filters, through a minimal rock perspective, archetypal prototypes and elements from jazz, funk, blues, concrete and electro-acoustic music.

Personnel: Manuele Giannini: guitar, amps, echoplex, wah, speaker, computer; Alessandro Bocci: computer, sampler, mixer, synth, turntables; Roberto Bertacchini: drums; Dino Bramanti: real-time processing/live mixing, sampling, MaxMSP code

More info about Sinistri at http://www.sinistri.org

Tracks: 1. Smooth Fried Tk2, 2. Bluesplex Pt1, 3. Pre-Verb Fried Funk, 4. Holes In Between, 5. Black Vamp #1, 6. Ampstone, 7. Cold fried Tk4, 8. NY Vamp (Second Set), 9. Deep Squeak, 10. Red Angular Feelin'

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“Who could resist a cd whose cover bears a sticker stating ‘Nonmetric music by ex-Starfuckers’? Perusal of the group’s website, however, reveals that this is less confession of past proclivities than a reference to their previous moniker. Sinistri declare an interest in asynchrony and nonmetric rhythms. The will to symmetry is strong, but on the evidence of Free Pulse, Sinistri’s desire to resist it is stronger still. Sinistri are an Italian quartet comprised of guitarist Manuele Giannini, drummer Roberto Bertacchini, turntablist, computer operator Alessandro Bocci and the realtime processing and sampling skills of Dino Bramanti. The music they produce is both idiosyncratic and rooted in the rock tradition articulated by Manuele Giannini’s guitar which growls and snaps like a frustrated tiger. His tone is attractively raw, with a vibrant electric quality not a million miles from John McLaughlin’s sound on Miles Davis’s Live-Evil. In fact, the overall impression of Sinistri’s music is of 1970s Miles sliced and diced until all that remains are tiny slivers.

Everything about the first track, ‘Smooth Fried Tk 2’, is a-stutter. Snares hiss and fizz like unwanted static electricity to create fidgety (a-)rhythms in which microscopic gaps open to allow Giannini space to improvise. Second track ‘Bluesplex Pt 1’ continues in the same vein, but its titular blue chords highlight the irregular grid applied to the track’s form like a random cookie cutter slicing through dough. The music continues in like fashion, febrile and blasted. The contributions of the turntablist and sampler are initially difficult to spot, but they’re gradually spied as irregular bass pulses or wavering background sounds. Still, much of the proceedings read as a guitar/drum duet glancingly reminiscent of the work of Gary Smith or Powerfield Ð at times there’s even something of Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic simultaneity. The stop/start form of the first few tracks is slowly revealed to be the norm and needs to be assimilated as a modus operandi for the music’s form to become clear. Hard work, but rewarding.”
Colin Buttimer, The Wire

“[...] ‘Free Pulse’ får även den min hjärna att koka, men inte av eufori. Nej, Sinistri är nämligen mästare på att skapa musik som går vid sidan av och bortom idéer som struktur och konventionella rytmer; de spelar "nonmetric music". Vilket alltså i realiteten betyder att man under de femtiofyra minuter som albumet pågår utsätts för en väldig mängd olika intryck - korta gitarrtoner här, ihållande ljud där, jazziga rytmer någon annanstans, byt plats, snurra runt, tillbaka igen - och det är när man försöker sortera alla dessa som ens små grå celler når hundra grader Celsius. Men det är kärt besvär.
Rated 8/10, Johan Jacobsson, Sonic

“[...] I en märkligt välordnad oordning presenterar trion sin kombination av elektronik och akustiska instrument som en blandning av jazz, blues och någon som precis blivit av med ett ben och fått en protes. Eller såhär: Ta introt till Jimi Hendrix "Foxey Lady" och en betydligt större bit av den där jazzgitarr-killen som säkert spelade på din kompis bröllop. Stoppa in dem precis som de är, i färgglad bandana respektive jazziga bröllopskläder, i en stor italiensk maskin och tryck på knappen "grovmalet". Maskinen delar upp gitarristerna bitar av olika storlek och pusslar ihop dem så att man nästan kan tro att de håller takten innan den matar ut dem igen på andra sidan. Resultatet? Stor underhållning.
Petter, Fat Bankroll