Bluvertigo - Morgan - Futurist Pop

Marco "Morgan" Castoldi, undisputed leader of Bluvertigo, has hair of an energetic orange. But the regrowth is starting to reveal its natural color. That's no small detail for an intellectual of pop music determined to control every last aspect of his career down to the smallest detail. If there's one band in Italy right now that's meticulous about everything it does, from TV appearances to videos, from concerts to image, from record artwork to photo shoots, that band is Bluvertigo. And then there's their music. An intriguing blend of Italian singer-songwriter tradition, new wave and English electronica, funk and much more.

Faced with such arrogance, knives were already out waiting for the first misstep, but not even the release of "Zero" gives anyone a chance to speak ill of them, because the album exceeds expectations and can only cement, once and for all, this Italian pop band's status — something the public and the MTV Europe Music Awards had already taken care of.

"Zero" is presented as the final chapter of the "chemical trilogy" that began in '95 with "Acidi e basi" and continued with "Metal not Metal". "The trilogy was conceived as such from the very start. I realized that with the first album I wouldn't be able to express the full potential of years of misunderstandings, renunciations and aspirations. 'Acidi' represented a problem-free childhood. 'Metallo' was the detachment, adolescence. 'Zero' is the dialectical overcoming of all that. A liberation, not a nihilistic annulment. The ideal closing of a circle. But to really pull it off we should have been sixty years old with a career behind us, so this wisdom has only been hypothesized".

The album contains a track that's ambitious to say the least, "Numero", with a bold string arrangement, the result of a collaboration with contemporary music composer Carlo Carcano. Could this be a hint at Bluvertigo's future? "There will definitely be a project of mine together with Carcano. It'll be a meeting of pop and classical music, which has always been my obsession, lasting 30-40 minutes, starting from a central core as in classical music. It'll be like the first movement of a light symphony. Someone already thought of this back in the Seventies with progressive rock, but now there's a greater command of melodic writing to avoid needless baroque flourishes".

But does it still make sense to talk about pop music? Back in 1985 Morrissey had already announced its death. "Anyone who feels like a genius sooner or later comes out saying that what they themselves do is dead. Carmelo Bene says theatre doesn't exist, that it's a receptacle for the dead. Sting said rock is dead. David Bowie had represented it by killing off his creation Ziggy Stardust. Pop could be very fertile ground, you can throw literature into it and even science. It can't just be entertainment or protest. But the chance to say something with lyrics is often wasted. People just chase poetic affectation. I've worked around the problems of the Italian language, so jagged and harsh, with plainness and by giving the utmost consideration to the meaning of what I sing. The only Italian model worth considering is Franco Battiato (a guest on "Zero" and someone Morgan collaborated with on "Gommalacca", ed.). Beyond that there are too many constraints, too many divisions. That's why I hold Pink Floyd in high esteem, and Bowie in his transformations, in his shifts that were above all conceptual".

The name of the "Thin White Duke" keeps coming up. His influence on Bluvertigo, together with that of Depeche Mode, is undeniable. From Bowie, "Zero" offers up a cover of "Always crashing in the same car", from the excellent "Low". "I love Bowie's Berlin period. It was truly the breaking point between low and high art. Before that, rock only served to piss off parents. Then came him, Brian Eno, Roxy Music. And the Velvet Underground. 'Always crashing' was chosen because it captured the album's theme well, circularity. And besides, it felt to me like the song was waiting to be unmasked, revealed in its true essence".

Before saying goodbye, Morgan finds time to fire off quick comments on everything, from the internet ("among so much information there will be a natural, Darwinian selection") to Bluvertigo's audience ("a society of individuals who form a great social paradox"), the upcoming tour ("these will be hi-fi shows, with sound fidelity above standard") and his production work for La Sintesi and Soerba ("I try to be very present in my work, but it's too early to talk about a real school 'à la Morgan'").

There's no doubt this man would be a goldmine for talk show hosts. We'll probably soon find him on Maurizio Costanzo's show, presenting without false snobbery his first book, "Dissoluzione", published by Bompiani, which collects his lyrics. Ghezzi and Sgalambro called it "a strange form of writing". Sounds like a compliment... "My only fear is that it might be considered poetry", Morgan concludes. A "poet" in his own way

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