Maoupa Mazzocchetti - Gag Flag (2018)

production on Clara!’s ‘Meneo’ 12". RIYL Matias Aguayo, Drexciya, Devo, Eric Copeland, Iueke, Low Jack, Prince, The Residents...

After scrawling his name on releases with close affiliates PRR! PRR! and for the Mannequin and Unknown Precept labels, new Brussels transplant Mazzocchetti finds good company among the oddballs on Editions Gravats for ‘Gag Flag’’s blend of avant dance music and absurdist experimental pop.

For ‘Gag Flag’ Mazzocchetti adopts the persona of “Snippet Boy”, a fictional avatar who first came to life in his live shows, and now in hyperstitious manifestation on the album sleeve. Lurking behind this persona, Mazzocchetti becomes an art-dance-pop puppeteer who yanks listener’s strings and takes popshots at industry overproduction, deflating egotism and hackneyed convention in a way that echoes the subversive approach of his heroes such as Devo and The Residents.

Using a blend of plugged in and acoustic instruments, Mazzocchetti conjures nine psychedelically misshapen and inexorably funked-up grooves, splashing from the lysergic swagger of ‘Looking For Cheese’ to the Arabian electro-acid styles of ’How To Hate You Without H?’ via the lap-steel dancehall slosh of ‘Ron’s Roof’, demented yacht-boogie in ‘Fonk Left The Ytown’, and what sounds like Depeche Mode doing knackered EBM on ’Sultan 1997’.

This is the sound of an artist unafraid to pursue their own sound and really coming into their own, albeit channelled thru a deflated, winking rubber avatar.