Paul Chain - Is Dead (Volume 1)

Strange news from another star thanks to Horn of Plenty, who as their seventh release have collated a 93 min double disc collection of music made by Paul Chain, an Italian musician for whom the title 'outsider artist' seems readymade (possibly in the Duchamp style). I'm playing catch up here, but it seems Paul Chain was actually an anglicised pseudonym adopted by one Paolo Catena back in 1977, who then subsequently retired the project in 2003, alongside destroying all tapes and photos in his possession. Paul Chain was dead. A quick glance online suggests that might have taken some time, given the volume of cassettes, LPs and CDrs he released. A large portion of the Paul Chain output is seemingly connected to doom metal, though Horn of Plenty mostly bypasses that aspect of his music and instead explores the various forays into electronic experimentation, komische, folk and psychedelia that coloured the edges of the catalogue. I guess what this highlights is just how tenuous genre classifications are in the context of DIY production. Metal doesn't seem the right context for this kind of music making, in some regards more at home in the post-punk/proto industrial underground of home recorded artists, reaching the apotheosis of that suggestion at the head-bending album centrepoint Tetri Teschi in Luce Viola - imagine Comus had they heard Throbbing Gristle (which in some ways does make Psychic TV), and you're halfway there, and still a good few miles off the mark. A truly singular and mystifying spirit. It seems Paul Chain is once again alive.