Perhaps the best known act of underground experimentalism is Ben Greenman’s The Mondo Matarazzo, a hard-edged 15 minute techno/doom hybrid that was first released in 2005 on Sector 12/Spirit Of St Mary’s tape. Since then, the same label has released several more, including the excellent album from Ben Greenman’s friend Andy Capp. "The Mondo Matarazzo" is a solo project, and it’s not as loud as his other projects, but it is still quite dense. The instrumentation is a dark ambient incubus with distorted screams and a few drum machines, hacked together from industrial sounds.

There are a few takeaways from the second and third times I listened to this. First of all, it is not that the music is bad, but that the textures and moods are too dense. The second time I listened, it sounded like the first time I had heard this kind of techno. This is clearly not the kind of thing you make a living off, but again, I don't think that makes a big difference.

This is not an album revolving around techno, but a collection of ambient pieces, with some techno spools in there. That being said, there is a more or less straight forward techno beat here, with some sonics mixed in with the occasional drum machine or synth.

Ben Greenman seems to have more or less remained largely quiet in the last year or two, but this one is worth keeping an eye on. It is still deep, mysterious ambient music, with the occasional melody or two, but mostly it stays in the shadows and is almost too subtle for someone like myself to hear it. Maybe that is just a strange quality, I don’t know. That being said, this is a fine piece of work, and one that I would be happy to see in some future releases.