Italia 90 return with ‘Tourist Estate’, the follow-up to their startling, out-of-nowhere debut EP last year. This latest single completes and confirms many of the initial statements made on their debut.
A deafening wall-of-noise encircles singer Les Miserable’s decries of poverty-porn (“public class fascination, patronising degradation!”) over a subterranean dub-reggae bassline and industrial percussion, an unusual but effective use of the 4-piece band. Before you can get comfortable, the drones are lost to what sounds like a sonic power-cut, leaving only the stark simplicity of Miserable’s one-word poem: brutalism, brutalism, brutalism!