VIDEO:

Blind Cave Salamander live in Kortrijk, Belgium at the
Happy New Ears Festival 2007

Blind Cave Salamander live in Athens, Greece at the
Lost In Thyme Festival 2007

PRESS:

©Davide Pepe 2007

©Davide Pepe 2007

©Davide Pepe 2007

©Davide Pepe 2007

©Davide Pepe 2007

REVIEWS:

Musique Machine 2008
Blind Cave Salamander debut album is an often shadowy yet elegant mix of atmospheric classical textures, electronics, dark post rock and ambience. Featuring Paul Beauchamp handling Electronics & Voice, Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo(Larsen, XXL, and ( r ) ) on Effects & Electro-acoustics elements, Marco Milanesio (DsorDNE ) Programming, bass and sound design and lastly(but not leastly) Julia Kent (Antony and The Johnsons) on cello and string arrangements.
Inside the cd cover there’s a lengthy write up about something called the Human fish, a subterranean fish/ snake creature that are rarely seen by the human eye, the often brooding mix of sounds here would be the perfect soundtrack for drifting in underground vast cave network in search of the human fish. The sound of the album is set between dark post rock, rich yet dark string textures with subtle electronic and field recording elements weaved through-out. The tracks are usual quite harmonic, structured and beat-bound, with a sound that is effectively atmosphere and original blend of sounds that does sound unlike anyone else.
A dark compelling debut of instrumental music that brings together classical grace, downturned post rock shimmer and electronic atmospheres in a rewarding and original package.

Roger Batty
www.musiquemachine.com

Sentire Ascotare Online Music Magazine January 2008
Bind Cave Salamander’s debut album is a true dive into a deep and alien subterranean world. A full sensory trip into the primordial total darkness of the reptilian habitat the project has taken its name and original inspiration from. Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo (electro-acoustics) and Paul Beauchamp (electronics), along with Julia Kent (cello) and Marco Milanesio’s production and sonic structures, have created an emotionally unstable sound-flow through the dark and mysterious lands of the primeval amphibian. Their music is an electroacoustic elegy to static and hidden living that requires taking sounds into the most remote depths of one’s self to be entirely understood. A work of perfect balance between acoustic movement and electronic lull, ambient (a la Kranky) and apocalyptic folk vibes, Blind Cave Salamander is an highly evocative and introspective album, distant from the other projects of its members (Larsen, Antony and the Johnsons) thanks to an almost hallucinatory visionary power.
(Do not) see with the eyes, to see with the ears.

Stefano Pifferi

Blow Up #113 October 2007
Finally the long-awaited debut of Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo and Paul Beauchamp, a disc that offers an unusual and unpredictable mixture of electronics, strings, guitar, drones and field recordings: a collection of sounds sculpted with care, that at times lean towards hypnotic, monotonous melodies (accompanied by Julia Kent, who in addition to cello also orchestrated the string arrangements) and at times accentuates a tendency to abstraction thanks to the contribution of Marco Milanesio. The field recordings captured in the Bossea Cave wrap the disc in a bursting and organic atmosphere, in which morbid strings infect sweet lullabies, and wrapping expanses are sucked into the slow whirlwind of obstinate rythms.
Though inseperable from the numerous and illustrious collaborations of its components (Larsen, Michael Gira, Current 93, Antony, just to name a few) the sound of Blind Cave Salamander presents itself as completely original: a very personal inflexion that insists on a hybrid vision of natural and synthetic of which, like the salamander that gives its name to the project, we will never discover the origins, but of which we can get the penetrating and submerged unraveling. 7 out of 8.

Daniela Cascella

Rumore #188 September 2007
Having clearly established the sonic field and key inspiration of the overall work, know that this is a successful and highly evocative disc. The musicians are: Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo (Larsen, (r)) and Paul Beauchamp (Radon Collective) with the contributions of Julia Kent (Antony and the Johnsons) and Marco Milanesio (DsorDne). Guitar, electronics, cello and bass lead the listener down the fluid and inaccessable path of Proteus, the neotenic salamander that lives for a hundred years, capable of surviving for twelve years without eating, living in the total darkness of subterranean lakes, keeping its gills for all its life and which has an up till now unknown reproductive method. Not exactly a pet for your niece , but certainly the ideal amphibian for melodic weavings that can restore solitude, infinte isolation and quiet diversity. Apart from Proteus anguinus, the album does not have an oppresive concept but mixes waves of ambience, in a Kranky style, with folk music vibes that could conquer fans of Calexico and Dirty Three’s desertic atmospheres. A faultless soundtrack for a cavernicolous vetebrate. 8 out of 10.

Maurizio Blatto

The Wire #252 Febuary 2005
FABRIZIO MODONESE PALUMBO (of Larsen) and PAUL BEAUCHAMP ( of Gullinkambi) have collaborated on what is cleary the heaviest release I've held this month.
Blind Cave Salamander ( PREcordings 3" CD) is packed with a five inch square piece of copper plating, that gives it a heft you won't forget once it has hit you in the head.
The four pieces included on the disc have surprisingly gentle inflections, combing low voices, ground-hugging mists of keyboards, genial electronic hucklebuck, and even acoustic guitar to create small vistas of delightful otherness that are sure to tickle stoners in all languages.

Byron Coley