Grosso Gadgetto
Violenza (version by The Merricks)

513
Violenza (version by The Merricks) Cover

Released October 16, 2026

"Spring 2023, Grosso Gadgetto released VIOLENZA for your favourite label, a collection of five tracks whose density and immersive power carved out a unique soundscape.

Three years later, Marc-Emmanuel Ackermann, alias The Merricks, decided to undertake a rework of the album. The undertaking might seem perilous, given how compact and vivid the original material appears, difficult to rework without upsetting its balance.

Five tracks, each reduced to an average duration of around six minutes. A drastic reduction that is neither a mere summary nor a stylistic exercise. A genuine work of deconstructed recomposition that acts less on the elements themselves than on their potential transformation. Here, the sonic masses change their behaviour. Tensions are redistributed. Trajectories contract.

Where some works develop through progression, this one seems to favour condensation. Each sequence feeds a sort of immediate necessity. Events emerge, clash, overlap and vanish before the ear has even fully assimilated them. A new sense of immediacy, a flirtation on the edge of the abyss.

The Merricks works with the material like a sculptor faced with a block already imbued with meaning and history. He does not seek to mask the existing layers, but to reveal them in a different light. Certain textures suddenly catch the dim light. Details previously lost in the overall mass become more visible.

This process of concentration also transforms the perception of space. The air seems denser. Distances shrink. Sounds no longer occupy a landscape but a closed volume whose walls are inexorably closing in. Listening becomes less contemplative and more physical. Low frequencies exert their pressure. Crackles act like nervous discharges. Fragments appear, then fade away, leaving behind a sense of persistent instability.

What is most striking is the way The Merricks maintains a sense of constant tension without ever succumbing to excess. Each layer seems to find its place within an extremely controlled architecture. Behind the turbulence, behind the apparent collisions, a meticulous construction emerges where nothing -nothing - is ever left to chance.

The five tracks thus come together to form the milestones of a single journey. A state of twilight tension.

With this version of VIOLENZA, The Merricks offers neither an explanatory reading nor a simple reinterpretation. It opens up a new access."

--thierry massard for Mahorka / June 2026

Original "Violenza" album performed, recorded and produced by Grosso Gadgetto (Gonzalez Christian) in Villeurbanne, France, December 2022 and released on Mahorka in February 2023:
mahorka.bandcamp.com/album/violenza

Original "Violenza" album artwork by Sagana Squale. "Violenza (version by The Merricks)" reinterpreted artwork by Gonzalez Christian.

The Merricks: https://themerricks1.bandcamp.com/

[mhrk513]

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