Many Others

* Mauvaise Haleine
brainwashed Review [ link ]
An improvisation for just electric guitar and drums, this album comes together as far more than the sum of its parts, due to Gregoretti's often unconventional, yet solid drumming and di Placido's liberal definition of guitar playing. It most certainly makes for an exhausting release as it rarely drops in intensity, resulting in a chaotic, yet fascinating album.
Olivier di Placido's guitar work is drastically different than others who push the boundaries of the instrument, by working with detached necks, broken strings, shorting out the electronics, and so forth, resulting in sounds that rarely sound like they were created with the venerable instrument. Only at times does the identifiable sound of a guitar string being plucked slip through, such as on the opening "Pulci Nella Batteria" and cast within the bubbling murk of "Cascano Pentole".
The former piece is one that stays a tornado of spastic, clattering disorder, but the latter demonstrates a more fleshed out sense of composition. First leading off at a slower pace before slowly piling noises on, the drums eventually going all out on heavy kicks and resonating snares resulting in a satisfying climatic freakout in the closing moments.
"Van Haleine" also showcases this more structured sensibility: from its lurching rhythm that slowly drives along a noisy, flatulent guitar into a morass of pounding drums and eventually shrill, painful cymbals filling the mix at the end. Often though the structure is a bit more hidden and subversive: "So Do I" has a seemingly scattershot guitar squall for the most part, but a tight rhythm section sneaks its way in every so slightly.
Not to discount Gregoretti's drumming at all, because he does an excellent job of passing between explosive blast beats and complex polyhrythms, but di Placido's guitar abuse is what draws the most attention. On "Absurd Blue" he somehow mangles the instrument to sound like a slowly dying jackhammer, while "Repugnant Green" results what sounds like a rainstorm hitting an electrical plant.
As a whole, Mauvaise Haleine is a dissonant, occasionally disjointed sounding work, but it is for that reason that it excels. Like the best of these improv based combos, there are a number of times that the chaos seems to be getting out of control, but is reigned in at just the right time, keeping everything with some semblance of structure. Coupled with the head scratchingly odd employment of guitar and the result is an album that may not be suitable for all moods, but when the situation calls for it, it is splendid. (Creaig Dunton)

Vital Weekly Review [ #878 ]
Another duo with drums and guitar. That was, I must admit, my thought when I started playing this. I was of course thinking of my local heroes Donne & Desiree, and once the CD was done playing I was still thinking about that fine local duo. Here we have their Italian counterparts Francesco Gregoretti on drums and Olivier di Placido on guitar. Both are self-taught and the first played in One Starving Day and in 2009 started Grizzly Imploded, sometimes called Strongly Imploded, or Oddly Imploded. Di Placido has played with Arnaud Riviere, Tony Buck, Anthea Caddy and in a band named Many Others, which is a funny name of course. They met up in June 2012 for a tour and swiftly arranged a date to record in a studio. They play their top heavy improvised music with the speed and aggression of a punk band - most of the times. Sometimes they hold back but even then, in some of that apparent 'silent' and 'careful' playing you feel the tension in the way the hit, strum, bang the sparse objects, but they are at their best when it's full on, very loud. Music like this, I have noted this before, is best enjoyed in concert, I think. Being there and see the action unfold before your very eyes. Experience the volume, the tension of it all. CD is a perhaps a poor excuse, I know, but it sounds pretty great all around here. Not unlike my local heroes in fact, maybe in a somewhat earlier incarnation for them, but their Italian peers are equally great. (Frans de Waard)

Just Outside Review [ link ]
Um, that'd be "bad breath" for you non-Francophones. One less guitar than above, here with Di Placido in the chair and the results, to my ears, are far superior for several reasons. One, the sound is more transparent, less oppressive, lending a fine clarity to the proceedings. Second, Di Placido is simply a more imaginative, provocative guitarist (even if I still hear some Frith now and then), finding a wide assortment of attacks tailored to his partner's activity, almost always interesting and showing a willingness to stick by and root around for a while instead of hopscotching from one approach to the next; he's very impressive here. Too, Gregoretti adapts a different approach on drums, much more in the efi tradition, evoking Gunter "Baby" Sommer or Paul Lytton now and then, but also finding his own sound word that's like a freer extension of Ronald Shannon Jackson. Even when the pair lurch into territory tangential to that explore on the trio disc ("So Do I"), things are more sharply defined and forceful, juggering along thickly and with power. Even if the overall tone of the disc remains a bit outside my real areas of interest, what they do, they do with admirable intelligence and variation, much more impressively than your standard free drums/guitar duo. Well worth checking out if you're into this side of things. (Brian Olewnick)

* La cigogne de déformation
Tileskopio Review [ link ]
το ντουέτο των olivier di placido (κιθάρα, ενισχυμένοι μαγνήτες, ανάδραση) & francesco gregoretti (ντραμς) σ αυτή τη μικρή σε διάρκεια κασσέτα μας δείχνουν ένα δρόμο που μπορεί ο αυτοσχεδιασμός να μπεί άριστα σε ηλεκτροακουστικά μονοπάτια χωρις να χάνει την παρόρμηση της αυτοσχεδιαστικής φύσης του. απλό λιτό και θορυβώδες μετρημένο όπως μου αρέσουν τέτοιες συνευρέσεις αυτή την εποχή. (Nicolas Malevitsis)

translation: "the duo of Olivier Di Placido (guitar, reinforced magnets, feedback) & Francesco Gregoretti (drums), in this short-duration tape, shows us a way in which improvisation can very well go into electroacoustic paths without losing its impulsive nature. Plain, unadorned and calculatedly noisy, just the way I like such meetings these days."

Kathodik Review [ link ]
Scrociata sanguinolenta impro noise, di pick up non fissati e batteria.
Di accenni di quel che paion corde e sgretolamenti assortiti, bordate taglienti e rantolate al limitar del grind.
Il francese Olivier Di Placido (spesso in duo con SEC_) e Francesco Gregoretti (In Grizzly Imploded, Oddly Imploded, Strongly Imploded e One Starving Day).
Nastro velenoso questo, che s'abbatte con grazia non distante da Aufgehoben (sopratutto per la qualità di registrazione, immediata e sufficientemente infame), ma le coordinate espresse, paion ancora da calibrar a puntino (nonostante la ferocia esposta).
Il gioco istantaneo in parte riesce, quando schiuma e tracima, senz'altro, quando rallenta nelle rade pause metallico/venefiche, meno.
Materia prima, il poi, più avanti nel tempo. (Marco Carcasi)

* Aggression of Paradox
Tabs Out Cassette Podcast Review [ link ]
It seems that the Italian tape label Archivio Diafònico has a great aesthetic worthy of imitation. This is definitely harsh noise but it seems to mostly come from amplified acoustic sources which are blurred by distortion to inscrutability. But for me, it's all an alien ear candy, it's roughness giving a pleasing texture to it all.
After doing some research online, for there was almost no information in the cassette, I found that Many Others is a duo of Francesco Gregoretti and Olivier Di Placido playing apparently a prepared guitar and drums. It didn't say on the website I found who was doing what# It's a bit jazzier than some of the other releases on Archivio Diafònico's Soundcloud but shares the same feeling of familiar acoustic sounds twisted and distorted enough to be wholly unrecognizable.
There's a wonderful sense of dynamics in the improvisations between Gregoretti and Di Placido. This separates the tape from a lot of harsh noise which stays monotonously unpleasant and loud and can become like an unpleasant smell in a room rather than a living entity of sound. Here, the sudden shifts in sound and timber keep one unbalanced enough to remain disconcerted and keeps the music from settling into the background. Rather than a slight unpleasant smell, this tape becomes more like the sudden onset of nausea which subsides forgotten and then arises again stronger and unignorable. I hope someone is jamming this in a boombox in some sort of terrifying squalid Italian squat.
Go ahead and grab a copy. (Jill Lloyd Flanagan)