MONTEMAGRO: NINETIES ARCHIVE

"The Albanian duo hails from Tirana and takes its first steps in the South Balkan rising punk scene of the mid-nineties.
After the death by overdose of many friends and supporters, the two quickly realize it's time for a change of scenery.
A first demo recorded to be submitted to European labels gets lost during the dramatic rubber-boat crossing from Valona to Bari to reach Italy's coast."

The lost demo: Sorrow on the Apulian coast

"Now illegal immigrants they find a job in Rome. They do the cleaning in a disco in the town centre.
After witnessing several parties they understand disco music could be the key to success, the real turning point of their career.
Soon after they realease their first work, an untitled CD, self-produced and recorded in their home-studio located under a bridge beside a furnace."

During rehearsal

"The CD mainly sounds like a huddle of cuts from various musical sessions assembled in some way.
In Roman nightclubs their music is underappreciated, rejected, mocked: some even believe them to be criminals. It's 1998."

Cover

"In 1999 a new work appears on the scene.
Beats and pseudo-dance rhythms make room for more minimal and introspective sounds. These times even see a performance at a local radio show soon degenerating into a brawl."

Cover

"But this would just be the prelude to the duo's artistic and personal ruin.
Stopped without a residence permit, they are interned in a CPT.
(Centro di Permanenza Temporanea, an Italian institution in which illegal immigrants are held up to their expulsion).
After some months of detention, all traces of them are lost.
One year later a tape is found in mysterious circumstances: three tracks put together with makeshift equipment in which their distinctive pessimistic Balkan mood typical meets a severe criticism of the brutal methods used by police forces."

CPT Tape

"From then, a long moment of silence broken only in 2000, when a Bombay indie label puts out an EP in which the initials HIV show up again.
This time beside the name Sharda,
an obscure and short-lived talent of indian pop music.
We cannot establish for certain the paternity of this latest work.
We can only suppose the duo has turned to some sort of Third World mysticism.
In any case all information about the band is scarce and often contradictory.
Many of the people we tried to contact in order to reconstruct the facts have turned out to be unavailable, fugitive or deceased."

HIV Complete Recordings
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