Amiina

An evening of delicate electroacoustic textures on October 4th at Circolo degli Artisti. An extremely interesting line-up, built around the night's headliners, the Icelandic Amiina, passing through Rome on the tour supporting their new album “Puzzle”.

Before them, Rome's folktronica institution La Pingra and the eccentric set from the Lombard artist behind the Musica da Cucina project, who set up at a side table in the room laden with his peculiar “tools of the trade” — pots, glasses, bowls and other kitchen utensils — accompanied by just one proper instrument, the guitar used to self-sample notes and delays that were then looped back.

After a brief pause, it's Amiina's turn: a band it would no longer be accurate to describe purely as all-female, and one it would now be misleading to keep tying to Sigur Rós, from whom they have by now substantially broken away, both in expressive terms and in their artistic activity. It comes as something of a surprise, then, to find only three young women on stage (the fourth having had to temporarily step away from the tour), joined by two male members handling electronics and drums respectively.

Fundamental changes, then, for a band that used to be thought of simply as a string quartet, and which on this occasion sees only two of the three musicians pick up their (electric, no less) violins, and only in the final part of the set. For the good hour that the set lasts, they're instead busy sketching out a broad range of liquid textures built on toy pianos, vibraphone and hazy rhythms, not without hints of folk and perceptible electronic touches. It would seem that, from their Sigur Rós-indebted origins, the band is now veering decisively toward the stylistic territory partly vacated by the recent transformations of Múm.

Recurring accordion lines and the occasional cameo from a small acoustic guitar mark out the songs on offer — particularly those from the new record, though also a few choice picks from “Kurr” — during which the three musicians repeatedly swap instruments and positions. So we get run-throughs of “Ásinn”, “Over And Again”, “Hemipode”, all dressed in sonic touches far less flat than in the past, variously enriched with melodic hints in song form, a variety of electronic beats and crackles, and drumming that's usually soft but occasionally turns sharper, taking on odd time signatures with a clear post-rock lineage (especially in the unleashed finale of “Sicsak”).

The show ends just as it began, with a second run-through of “Ásinn” and the musicians taking a respectful bow before the large (and overheated) crowd that turned out at Circolo degli Artisti to discover a band deeply transformed and matured in its ability to carve out its own artistic identity — hardly unprecedented, yet nonetheless become lively and thoroughly enjoyable.

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