MySpace Trawl – Modern Institute

After doing this feature for God knows how long, it’s just dawned upon us that we don’t have a witty opening tag to use every week.

You know how Q Magazine’s motto is ‘use crusty bands on the cover that are popular and will shift a few copies’. The NME’s words of wisdom are ‘recycle the same twenty bands every week and make up new genres like “post vacuum glam” to make us look hip and trendy’.

So after thinking long and hard we’ve come up with this drawn-out introductory paragraph. “Each week we try and bring you something a little bit different and isn’t necessarily going to make you the coolest kid in school. Here’s something that we think sounds ace, but hasn’t quite got the power to make A&R men wank out millions of pounds to whore it out on TV & Radio”. On second thoughts, that sounds really shit, so we’ll not bother. Here’s something much better, Modern Institute.

For the first time - we think - we’re featuring an artist from Italy. The country has a traditional history of classical pieces being composed by the finest artists in the world. Our ignorance shines through at this point as we struggle to list any Italian singers/artists/bands apart from Pavarotti. Somehow, we don’t think DJ Pastabake or MC Pizzatopping are real.

Classical music is obviously known for its soft and subtle tone. You’re not likely to see anyone plugging their violin into a nearby amp and going off on a five minute fiddling solo. Whilst Modern Institute are not classical musicians, the sounds that they create are equally calming and soothing.

Think of it like this. After a night out in a tacky nightclub or bar which is way overpriced, you may feel a bit worse for wear in the morning. People around you may offer bacon sandwiches, mugs of sugary tea, super strength lager or paracetamol, but you’ll still be battling the demon headache and wishing everyone around you would just piss off. Having music like this playing softly in the background will help ease the pain and make you think of promises you’ll later break, such as “I’ll never drink again.”

Modern Institute is a duo comprising of Teho Teardo on guitar, rhodes, synth and programming and Martina Bertoni on the trusty cello. Using these instruments, they describe the music they make as “an emotional combination of programming and electronic sounds with the raw sound of acoustic cello.”

That they do indeed achieve this aim and for once it’s not a band writing a biography that isn’t boring, overdrawn and the opposite of what they sound like. Tracks such as Not A Word sound so simple and effective, though it probably took months of careful craft to nail. Vocals aren’t needed as the music takes firm control.

Annoyingly, the band seems to be on a hiatus since the release of their debut album Excellent Swimmer in 2006. Trying to find out information on releases and projects come to a dead end and blog entries are well dated. But not all is lost; a new track seems to have been added recently called Brake. Hopefully it’s a teaser of something new that is soon to come.

For more:

Modern Institute MySpace