Neoprimitivi

A project that presents itself as suspended in a space-time cocoon. A debut single, “Sul globo d'argento”, which is about as far from radio-friendly as you can imagine today: a twenty-one-minute suite split into five movements, released exclusively on cassette tape. A freak-out provocation hopelessly out of time? In truth, it only takes a few minutes of listening to decipher all the sincerity – and I'd even say modernity – embedded in this personal take on psychedelic, psychotropic, lysergic progressive rock, which unfolds letting in motorik influences (clear homages to the kraut world), garage and ambient, alternating slow evolutions with proto-garage charges. “Orgia Mistero”, the Roman collective's debut album, released at the end of March 2025, was immediately able to galvanize a broad convergence of opinion (always positive) from music critics. Side A of the vinyl carries the already-released single, while Side B houses three unreleased tracks – “Artificali”, “La teiera nera” and “Natulrich” – for a further twenty-one-odd minutes. It's a return to certain sixties-seventies atmospheres, a search for the roots of an increasingly rare way of making music, one that refuses to rush, that has no intention of condensing itself into thirty seconds to fire off on TikTok. The concept devised for “Orgia Mistero” is humanity's emigration to another planet, where the conditions would arise for the development of new musical forms. A neo-primitivism (hence the name chosen to identify the band), a sci-fi approach that materializes in jams compressed into a fairly fluid song format, picking out the most interesting parts from long improvisations carried out in the studio. The band's wholesome ideals are also carried over into the live dimension, with a residency at Trenta Formiche in Rome that can be imagined as an updated version of Pink Floyd at London's UFO Club in the days of Syd Barrett.

It's clear that Neoprimitivi are building a road all their own, a genuinely personal path, one that is also quite rich in potential obstacles, but precisely for this reason all the more stimulating. They couldn't care less about classifications and radio play: their style is rather hard to pigeonhole, and when they perform live, if they really have to pick a cover, they go all in on Sister Ray” by the Velvet Underground, just to make their desire to experiment without too many fences clear to the world. After garnering widespread acclaim in their first year of activity, Neoprimitivi release their second album as a surprise, with no advance notice whatsoever: it's called “Il sangue è pronto”, and it's a project that once again stands out for its rather unique peculiarities, especially these days. It's a single track, thirty-eight minutes and twenty-six seconds long: unless you want to go skipping around like a maniac, if you want to listen to it streaming you'll have to sit through the whole thing in one go. A listen that necessarily has to be attentive, immersive, dedicated. A pagan ritual, a psychedelic sabbath full of sinuous crescendos, daring surges and placid calms, within which there's a constant succession of lounge-jazz-funk digressions, Lynchian incursions, mystical oases, tribal ceremonies, homages to Talking Heads, world-music inclusions, dub rarefactions, esoteric spoken-word passages. A single long track structured like a progressive rock suite, divided into six movements each with its own title: in their own way they are fully-formed songs, yet ones that can't be listened to separately from everything surrounding them. It's impossible to slot just one of them into a playlist: all or nothing, in open defiance of the music-business rules of the new millennium. The six musicians certainly aren't lacking in nerve, but they manage to create an absolutely intriguing and engaging listen, with thirty-eight-plus minutes that ultimately fly by, winning the listener over through the sheer amount of things happening within them. The idea behind the album was refined following the live scoring of the film “Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel Trecento”, a cult horror/erotic film from the Seventies directed by Renato Polselli, which took place during one of the sessions of the monthly residency the Roman collective held throughout 2025 at Trenta Formiche in Rome (which, from 19 February 2026, will once again become a regular fixture). During the writing and recording stages of the album, the initial content then morphed into something else, expanded, while still retaining a certain cinematic progression. Composed, played and recorded together with Giacomo Fiorenza, produced by Flavio Gonnellini, “Il sangue è pronto” also features Gaia Banfi on backing vocals and Eugenio Petrarca (Acrartep) on drones and synth.

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Neoprimitivi are:

Andrea Gonnellini: vocals, bass, sampler, alto saxophone, ciaramella, percussion

Flavio Gonnellini: vocals, Farfisa Tiger organ, guitar, double bass, percussion

Martino Petrella: vocals, guitar, balalaika, conga, vibraphone, melodica, percussion

Giacomo O'Neil: vocals, drums, percussion

Pietro Rianna: kaospad, springs, noise box, theremin, percussion

Emilia Wesolowska: vocals