My Cat Is An Alien

About

My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA) is the name of the Italian musical duo and outsider audiovisual artists consisting of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, formed in Torino, Italy, in late 1997. They release experimental / avant garde music in a peculiar form of improvisation that MCIAA themselves define 'instantaneous composition'.

My Cat Is An Alien have set up multimedia collaborations with vanguards such as Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Christian Marclay, Keiji Haino, Loren Mazzacane Connors, [a=Jackie-O Motherfucker], Jim O'Rourke, Nels Cline (Wilco), Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Christina Carter (Charalambides), Mats Gustafsson, Enore Zaffiri and many more.

Byron Coley and Thurston Moore wrote on Arthur Magazine, "Italy's MY CAT IS AN ALIEN is the finest two-brother band from Italy since the end of the Great War."

MCIAA's first live show was supporting Sonic Youth in 1998. Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth is a fan and has collaborated with the duo and released some of their material on his own Ecstatic Peace! record label.

Multi-instrumentalists, My Cat Is An Alien primarily play electric and acoustic guitars, self-made string instruments, various toy instruments (so-called 'space toys'), modified electronics ('alientronics') and a wide set of percussion. Roberto Opalio's personal use of wordless vocalizations adds human voice as a further instrument in the list.

MCIAA's work range over many artistic activities: musical performance, films and videos, audiovisual installations, poetry, drawing, photography, painting.

In September 2011, My Cat Is An Alien are the cover feature in The Wire magazine.