My Cat Is An Alien

My Cat Is an Alien (MCIAA) is the audiovisual improv duo formed in late 1997 by the brothers Maurizio Opalio and Roberto Opalio from Torino, Italy. They primarily play electric and acoustic guitars, voice, toy microphones, various toy instruments, electronics and percussion. Roberto Opalio and MCIAA's work range over many artistic activities: musical performance, films and videos, audiovisual installations, photography, painting and drawing, poetry.

On their own Opax Records, they release vinyls, tapes, cds and dvds, whose unique handmade art-edition style represents the esthetics of the duo, giving a strong and peculiar visual aspect to all MCIAA's artistic works.

MCIAA have set up multimedia collaborations with vanguards such as Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Christian Marclay, Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, Loren MazzaCaneConnors, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Nels Cline, Text of Light, Steve Roden, Mats Gustafsson, Enore Zaffiri and many more.

MCIAA's prolific works have been released by Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) on his own Ecstatic Peace! label, as well as by Atavistic Worldwide (USA), Les Disques VICTO (CAN), Important Records (USA), Very Friendly/ Cargo (UK), PSF (Japan), Staalplaat/ Mort Aux Vaches (NL), Eclipse Records (USA), Starlight Furniture Co./ Revolver (USA), Last Visible Dog (USA), Time-Lag Records (USA), PseudoArcana (NZ), Sloow Tapes (B), Ikuisuus (FIN), A Silent Place (ITA), Foxglove/Digitalis Industries (USA) among others.

Between 1998 and 2009 MCIAA toured several times in Europe with Sonic Youth, and have performed at many prestigious international festivals: Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (Canada), ATP Nightmare Before Christmas curated by Thurston Moore (UK), Music Lovers' Field Companion festival at Sage Gateshead in Newcastle (UK), CCA Center of Contemporary Arts di Glasgow (UK), K-raa-k Festival (B), State-X Newforms (NL), Feedback Festival in Dijon (F), Stimul Festival in Prague, All Frontiers in Italy, among many others.

In 2005 Roberto Opalio has been commissioned to design a t-shirt for The Wire magazine.

Roberto Opalio and My Cat Is An Alien are currently taking part to the ongoing Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix museum exhibition, scheduled in Europe, America and Asia for the next three years. For the first opening at LiFE museum (F) in June 2008, MCIAA set up a live performance collaboration with Lee Ranaldo and Micheal Morley of Dead C, published by Starlight Furniture Co. USA in September 2009.

Other than the official exhibition catalog published by Walter Koenig, curator Roland Groenenboom will present a spin-off limited zine at Malmo Konsthall, featuring exclusive artworks by Roberto Opalio and MCIAA.

MCIAA's articles, interviews and extended reviews are featured on the most important international music magazines like The Wire (UK), The Sound Projector (UK), Dream Magazine (USA), Arthur Magazine (USA), The Ptolemaic Terrascope (UK), Brokenface (SWE), Dusted Magazine (USA), Foxy Digitalis (USA), Studio Voice (JP), Stylus Magazine (USA), Noiseweek (USA), Industrial (USA), Brainwashed (USA), Kwadratuur (BE), PanPot (CAN), Blow Up (ITA), Rumore (ITA), Il Mucchio (ITA), Gaz-Eta (PL), His Voice (CZ), and many more.

http://www.mycatisanalien.com

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