HOX VOX is my main music project. I made my first record Eight-Bit Deboned in 1989, then I lost interest in making music until 2008, when a few friends pushed me to restart, and I made first record of Hox Vox’s second phase (Outskirt).
My discography is a series of concept albums filled with a great amount of different genres – even within the single songs, but the platform of the big mess is art rock / rock in opposition / avant-prog. I also cure videoclips and album graphics (cover, booklet).
Status: ACTIVE
BAND MEMBERS
- Gianluca Missero – Bass, keys, voices, percs, noises, loops
RELEASES
[HV-027] – COVERS
LP – released 20 August 2016
A collection of covers made by Hox Vox, Dead Hox, Turbogrind Terrorizers.
[HV-026] – IMPALPABLE
LP – released 22 March 2016
It’s all about winding between DnB and Avantprog.
[HV-025] – THE TICKLISH ROAD TO UTOPIA
LP – released 30 September 2015
Rise, power and fall of a love.
[HV-024] – TORTOISE ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE BECAUSE FUCK YOU, THAT’S WHY
LP – released 24 August 2015
The record’s theme is this famous meme I used as album cover, so it’s a record about an entity caged and in the need to escape. A return to a less friendly musical approach after last “melodic” records. First song is pure noise and, track by track, music goes just a little more listenable with Whatever I Do Is Wrong and Sleeping in a Dorm, but then it turns again to idiosyncratical ambients.
[HV-023] – MENACE
LP – released 01 November 2014
This is a contemporary music record about a woman, logical follow-up to Tiny Songs about Sorrow. That was a showcase of sensations after the events have become; this is the environment, the conditions, portraits of her, my middle age ponderings. The Ticklish Road to Utopia will be the third step: the whole story, fact by fact.
[HV-022] – TINY SONGS ABOUT SORROW
LP – released 16 October 2014
Together with 2 Minutes 4/4 100 BMP this record is available to buy at iTunes and Amazon.com. Record title explains itself what’s this record about: a travel through melancholy and regrets.
[HV-021] – 2 MINUTES 4/4 100 BPM
LP – released 05 August 2014
An album filled with tracks lasting exactly 2 minutes, in 4/4, running at 100 BPM speed. Of course there are exceptions and ambushes here and there, but song length rule was respected.
[HV-020] – TALOFEN, XANAX AND OTHER LITTLE STORIES
LP – released 22 July 2014
An unpleasant experience at Mestre’s Hospital First Aid was the inspiration (and the concept) for this record. Songs about mutated perceptions due to chemical “support”. It’s one of the two record I put on sale on iTunes and Amazon.com
[HV-019] – GLYPHS
LP – released 16 July 2014
It’s called Glyphs because songs are shaped by strict rules like fonts families, so they are all into song form (verse/chorus) and none of them miss melodies. It’s the most listenable record in my catalogue.
[HV-018] – HURRY UP HARRY PT. 3
LP – released 24 April 2014
Guest guitarists:
Luciano Marinetti (on Overdose: flashback)
Enrico Merlin (on Time to Leave)
David Preston (on Overdose: The Wave / Wince / Breakdown)
[HV-017] – SUFFER
EP – released 01 December 2013
Quite electronic, with a funk attitude in “No Dope” and “Desire”.
[HV-016] – ./ROOT: THE SINGLES (2009-2012)
LP – released 24 December 2012
Music coming from compilations, collaborations or single song based projects, and chronologically added to the tracklist. Volume I.
[HV-015] – THE CARNIVAL OF ANIMALS
LP – released 04 December 2012
My rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of Animals.
[HV-014] – MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
MICRO-EP – released 28 May 2012
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans’ innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, all of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow use the terms Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization needs to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.
Hierarchy
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid, with the largest and most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization at the top. While the pyramid has become the de facto way to represent the hierarchy, Maslow himself never used a pyramid to describe these levels in any of his writings on the subject.
The most fundamental and basic four layers of the pyramid contain what Maslow called “deficiency needs” or “d-needs”: esteem, friendship and love, security, and physical needs. With the exception of the most fundamental (physiological) needs, if these “deficiency needs” are not met, the body gives no physical indication but the individual feels anxious and tense. Maslow’s theory suggests that the most basic level of needs must be met before the individual will strongly desire (or focus motivation upon) the secondary or higher level needs. Maslow also coined the term Metamotivation to describe the motivation of people who go beyond the scope of the basic needs and strive for constant betterment. Metamotivated people are driven by B-needs (Being Needs), instead of deficiency needs (D-Needs).
The human mind and brain are complex and have parallel processes running at the same time, so many different motivations from different levels of Maslow’s pyramid usually occur at the same time. Maslow was clear about speaking of these levels and their satisfaction in terms such as “relative” and “general” and “primarily”, and says that the human organism is “dominated” by a certain need, rather than saying that the individual is “only” focused on a certain need at any given time. So Maslow acknowledges that many different levels of motivation are likely to be going on in a human all at once. His focus in discussing the hierarchy was to identify the basic types of motivations, and the order that they generally progress as lower needs are reasonably well met.
(source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)
[HV-013] – HURRY UP HARRY PT. 2
LP – released 15 February 2012
[HV-012] – IL CAVALLO SPAIATO
LP – released 24 April 2011
Il Cavallo Spaiato is about schizophrenia, music is quite lunatic and moves continuously from avant-prog to glitch/jungle/hardtek, like two clashing identities in same body. Song Flipback is inspired by italian showgirl (and icon) Raffaella Carrà and her super-mainstream songs, particularly “Ma Che Musica Maestro”. Of course results are less commercial. I also made a bebop/avant rework on Jeux d’Eau by Maurice Ravel.
[HV-011] – MOCK THRILL
LP – released 26 September 2010
Mock Thrill is a record about suffer, solitude and hypocrisy, and it’s dedicated to people who are or feel stump. Mock is a guy who’s born with a malformation: he has no limbs. So the only happy moment of his life is into the womb, when floating in limbo (first track), and it makes no difference for him having or not legs and arms. His birth ends in a metallic clang: life entering shock. At the restaurant he’s still a baby, but perceive people pretending they’re not noticing his deformity. A taste of false piety. There is a brief episode when aunt Jamima don’t realize he fell from the electric wheelchair – he’s desperate because he can’t get up, feels stuck and helpless, useless. Then in Abandoned Dog Afternoon he lives one of the innumerable afternoons lying on the couch like a broken doll, ridiculously bored and slowly going mad. In one of these afternoon, he’s catched by a Butterfly flight, so he has a beam of simple beauty and somewhat forget for a while about him, forced by solitude to face himself day by day he quits his (sad) solipsism. He refuses to see the new false friends when he’s a teenager (Please Do not Want to Know Nice Fake New Friends), distrust of others who obviously consider him a “monster”. But one day he knows Eddie, a friend who does not seem to think he’s an “useless stump”, as bad kids called Mock. They become rapidly friends, and start to have experiences together: they have a trip (Eddy Gave me a Coriander), then they go to see an art exhibition (Me and Eddy at an Art Exhibition), in short, everything’s great now. Suddenly, Eddy knows a brasilian girl cruising nightlife and start to get “unavailable” , too busy… and while he’s busy, Mock start to become paranoid. He’s right, Eddy disappear forever. So Mock get back to his bloody couch again and again. And we see, at the end of this record, when Mock’s mind collapses and goes totally mad (Blast of Fury).
[HV-010] – MEANIMAL
LP – released 27 October 2010
Very fast record (12 tracks for 18 minutes), minimal in song duration, but also an admixture among mean and animal, primitive, sometimes solar tunes.
There are 4 ska/reggae/dub tracks (Alaska, Anaconda, Kind Titan – hommage to Gentle Giant – and Epifonema), a pereubian waltz (Il Valzer di Paolo), avantprog (Gestalt), alt. pop (Roundabout), experimental (Ammutinamento!, Glasgow Coma Score, Entropia), a strange stomp harmonica endless startup (Catfight) and a drama number (Panic in the Elevator).
[HV-009] – DADA
LP – released 26 September 2010
This record is a brief journey through Dada art movement. Opening track is dedicated to Cabaret Voltaire, a swiss nightclub where all started by a group of european artists. First founder, and subject of second track, was Hugo Ball (he wrote the small poem I-Zimbra, which was subsequently used as a lyrics by Talking Heads in their namesake song). Hence continues the portrait gallery of Dadaists, interrupted sometimes by three small tracks called Shiver. To people with few, or no knowledge about dadaists, reading the booklet is strongly recommended.
[HV-008] – DADA
EP – released 09 August 2010
This EP includes first 4 tracks from next LP Dada, a concept album about Dadaism art movement seen through famous Dadaists’ points of view. Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara are two electronic ballads, winding between kraut rock and trip-hop. Hans Arp is a tragic cabaret piece with a war scenario on the background, George Grosz is quite Motown meet Stockhausen.
[HV-007] – THE WANDERER
EP – released 05 June 2010
It’s a story about a doped killer on the way to catch his victim, during a whole night in Savannah (GA). Five scenes includes an introduction (The Wanderer), where the killer wake up from drugs effects, and the subsequent route through the latin area (La Posada de Joaquín Ortega), downtown (Downtown Strut), actually on Savannah harbour (Port of Savannah). Last three minutes of blistering hysterical chase are enclosed in ending track, Gotcha.
[HV-006] – MJOLLNIR
LP – released 04 April 2010
First part is made by eight portraits (Jörð, Odin, Sif, Thor, Baldr, Loki, Freyr and Heimdall), plus two finals tracks:
- Ragnarök (“final destiny of the gods”), in Norse mythology is a series of major events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Freyr, Heimdall, and the jötunn Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water.
- Epilogue, referring to the afterwar.
Music is avantprog, loosely inspired by Magma, Frank Zappa, King Crimson, EL&P.
[HV-005] – HURRY UP HARRY PT. 1
LP – released 19 Dicember 2009
It’s the first section of 3 about Harry’s saga, always on the run between rebellion and his ghosts. In this first part, the travel pass through California, Mexico, Panama and Jamaica. Music is breakbeat-based with some excursions in ambient, latin, hip hop, all filtered by a Rock in Opposition point of view. This record is in memory of Death in Venice drummer Marco Bianchi.
[HV-004] – ÉTOILE
LP – released 04 July 2009
It’s a concept album about stars – both intended as prima ballerinas and celestial bodies – and their issues. Genre is a series of mixes with world music, symphonic progressive, a bit of contemporary and kraut electronics, always with the free approach of Rock in Opposition tradition (from Zappa to Henry Cow): sometime resulting in complex structures with mindbending pairings of melodies and subtle detuned arrangments. Étoile starts with a Residents-like intro sung by a couple of real pigs, then a piece of math/art rock, sounding like a too dry death metal. Then from Rhythmbox the record begins wedging prog, contemporary, world and electronics.
[HV-003] – DAS CHAMALEON
EP – released 15 March 2009
5 tracks about mutant music, obtained through bizzarre pairings or juxtaposing uneven genres.
Springbound is an electronic/IDM number
Plastique Boots between white reggae and rock
Entr’Acte inspired by famous Renè Clair movie put together electronics and a latin melody
Cockroach got the darker Residents influences and a fusion bass
Das Chamäleon start in a funky fashion and developes a series of themes usually considered as incongruous, being the manifesto of whole record.
All drawings on cover and booklet by me.
[HV-002] – OUTSKIRT
EP – released 08 December 2008
Outskirt is a concept album on low populated areas, or at least far from centre. All the record is ever changin’ genres from song to song:
– Sigma Hydrae is a 3 minute groove between contemporary and space rock
– Møre og Romsdal is an avant rock/technical death metal hybrid
– Reidsville, NC is post-rock, but seen from country view
– Giant Star Antares kraut rock à la Kraftwerk
– LaGuardia 3:00 AM between jazz rock and progressive
– Zimniy Dvorets a romantic classical piece for 4 pianos
– Thar Desert is same time Chic and Contortions funky
– Junction Box pure electronics
– Belief suite is winding between R.I.O. and avantgarde, except for Sloth (synthpop) and Pride (latin)
– Pet’s Repository is punk progressive (I could say skeleton progressive).
[HV-001] – EIGHT-BIT DEBONED
LP – released 17 January 1989
Eight-Bit Deboned was composed and played using a tracker (Oktalizer 1.0) on an Amiga 500 between december 1988 and january 1989.
With this set I composed 14 songs about people moods and travels, then I packed all on a HD floppy in mod format, with a mod player enclosed. The resulting sound vaguely reminds of Residents or Fred Frith. Technical limitations (only 8 mono tracks) gave him a minimal taste, between 70’s 8-bit videogame music and freak industrial.
In October 2008 I found a copy and decided to reissue it. On Amiga I tried to reconstruct songs (all had errors and missing or damaged sounds), I substituted some samples such Malcom X on Friend and Enemies or a few voices in Luke’s Travel. At the end I recovered only 10 tracks.