Gerstein - Phlegmaticus,tape,1987,Italy

Gerstein was born in fall 1984 as a personal music project of Maurizio Pustianaz. Since then he has moved between solo melancholic piano ballads, experimental harsh sounds, synth-guitar powerful extravaganza before approaching his electronic semi-melodic style in the latest years.
In the past Gerstein has released several tapes through Infektion Prod, his own label, and through many other labels such as: Misty Circles (I), BrokenFlag (UK), Minus Habens (I), Bekko Bunsen (I), HAX (I), etc.
In 1993, his first full length vinyl album entitled "Sucker" was released in collaboration with Misty Circles. The piano was still the main instrument then, but guitars, bass guitar and drum machine were also used.
Then it was time for a change... 1994 was the year of the rising sun for Gerstein and a new energy moved the project, a split MiniCD entitled "Harakiri for Seven Strings" was released in collaboration with Sshe Retina Stimulants. The two noisy tracks created by Gerstein were "The First Step into My Deep Throat" and "In the Shadow of the Sun".
Shortly after, Johnny Mastrocinque joined in the Gerstein project bringing his sampler machine with him. Gerstein's music became darker and tense... The new tracks were a sort of dark soundtrack. Piano, synths, guitar, samples: everything was used each time in a different way to create sicksongs with a melodic taste.
"St. Anthony's Fire" was released on CD in 1998 on the acclaimed german label Discordia. Unfortunately Discordia bankrupted a few months later and the album suffered of no promotion and a very poor distribution.
At the end of 1999, when the recordings of "Burn" were complete, Johnny Mastrocinque left Gerstein and since then got involved with a lot of hip hop bands. "Burn" was released privately in two editions, the latter also contained the whole "St. Anthony's Fire" as a bonus. An old tape, "Phlegmaticus" was also re-released on Oktagon Records at the same time.
Since then, due to his involvment with Chain D.L.K. magazine, Gerstein kept on working on new music and on his new project called Noisebrigade in a more relaxed way.
In October 2003 Afe released "Here Comes Sickness", a collection of mostly unreleased and rare tracks, to celebrate Gerstein's 20th anniversary.

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