Port-Royal

Their tenth Roman show in the span of just a few years, for a band that can now be called, without hesitation, the most internationally relevant Italian act around. Ten concerts that testify to the affection the capital's audience holds for the Genoese band, and whose journey from smoky basements to the Auditorium and the Basilica di Massenzio perfectly exemplifies the growing recognition of Port-Royal, who are finally beginning to be acknowledged in more "institutional" settings too.

And yet their bond with a spontaneous, genuinely independent way of making and experiencing music leads them to play for the fourth time at the Circolo degli Artisti, welcomed by the usual large, enthusiastic crowd, not remotely tired of seeing them return to the same stage barely four months after their most recent performance there.

For the occasion, working the laptops and synths are only Attilio Bruzzone and the indispensable "video man" Sieva Diamantakos, while the other recent regular of the band's live lineup, Aleksandr Vatagin, stayed behind in Vienna for reasons tied to the economic side of touring, since, evidently, all the acclaim in the world isn't enough to make even artists of proven renown swim in gold.

What remains, as always, well above par is the passion Attilio and Sieva pour into the stage, and nothing about the music suffers for the brevity of the set, kept short for organisational reasons that saw them play second on a tightly-scheduled bill later completed by English composer Jon Hopkins (in the past a collaborator of, among others, Coldplay and Massive Attack).

And yet neither the limited time available nor the format of the performance, as usual heavily centred on the digital dimension, in any way cooled the impact of the tracks or the energy of the two men on stage. That much is clear right from the blistering opening, with a "The Photoshopped Prince" heightened by tight rhythms and ominous, techno-tinged depths: in one of their packed shows in Eastern Europe, that alone would have been enough to turn the venue into a blazing dance-hall, far closer to a rave than to the static show of some po-faced laptop artist. Italian audiences remain rather afraid to dance, even though their vibrant participation shows through in occasional swaying and waving arms, and can be felt in the air as a kind of neural dance duly stirred by rhythms and images.

The set featured no true unreleased tracks (with the partial exception of "Frederic Sorge", taken from the recent limited-edition Ep made together with Millimetrik, "Afterglow"), but that doesn't mean Port-Royal settled for repeating modes of expression already tried before, as shown by some new video pairings and, above all, the incandescent stretching to over a quarter of an hour of the "anthem" "Balding Generation (Losing Hair As We Lose Hope)".

It is precisely in the choice of tracks and, as in this last case, in reshaping some of them into an even more explicit and brazen dance key, that the concentrated intensity of Port-Royal's tenth Roman evening lies. Who knows whether next time the Roman audience will grant their wish for a more danceable involvement, but what's certain is that their (deca-)dance for minds and souls once again managed to strike a perfect chord with those present, however timid the outward reactions may have been.

(01/03/2010)

Photo: Dina Nurpeissova

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