Tonto

Tonto came out of the most perverted wet dreams of Lightning Bolt, Shellac, Zu, and Death Grips. You can call it Noise, but it's groovy like Hip-hop but raw like Punk. The project started in the damp hole of the early 2010s Italian noise rock scene, then tamed in the worst pubs of Bologna, dribbled in the dense broth of the European Impro-Noise, and polluted by the same with a frenzied series of international tours between 2016 and 2023. Tonto is a no-guitar one-man band, with drumset and voice amplified in a jungle of distortions and digital artifacts. You get some sexy blast beats but also African polyrhythms at times, a lot of bumbum-cha like ghettoblasta and occasional ass-shaking straight 4/4. Tonto goes for wild barbarism and non-verbal expressiveness, rather than overt structures and methods. Tonto is a musician through a computer, like a monkey in a spaceship. Francesco Zedde (aka Tonto) played 538 shows in 7 years; he released more than 30 records with 20 independent labels such as Econore, Grandine Records, and Selva Elettrica. He collaborated with artists such as Mark Stewart, HHY, Lili Refrain, Uochi Toki, Dj DNA. Francesco facilitated and organized 42 editions of Discomfort Dispatch, a transnational festival format for improvised music, involving 386 artists so far.