Casino Royale - Ever closer for thirty years

The occasion was the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of "Sempre più vicini", the pivotal album by Casino Royale, brought back to the stage at Monk for a long evening that revealed a band in surprisingly full, almost overflowing form. Over roughly two hours of music, the band revisit the title track, "Pronti al peggio" — which Alioscia introduces by bitterly pointing out its almost prophetic clarity in relation to the present day — along with "Cose difficili", "Anno zero" and other songs that, thirty years on, sound nothing like archival relics but rather like material that is still very much alive and pulsing.

The most obvious thing is precisely this: time has passed, but the sound hasn't stood still. The trip-hop roots remain recognizable, with Geppi Cuscito's bass as taut and present as ever, but the live set is shot through with a broader, more layered rhythmic component that leans constantly toward electronics.
At the start, Alioscia fully asserts himself as frontman, pacing the stage with constant movement, dancing and near "call to arms" gestures aimed at the crowd, in a still strongly performative, physical dimension. As the show goes on, though, this approach gradually shifts. The stage presence grows sparser, and the band's leader progressively withdraws from centre stage, scaling back his gestures and physical presence until more and more room is left purely for the sonic architecture.

The stage thus thickens into a kind of increasingly dense musical fog, with the musicians silhouetted against the light and a structure that gradually takes on the contours of a rarefied, immersive "discotheque" — more cerebral than festive.

After about an hour, and a brief interlude dedicated to the Flotilla, the band return to the stage with some of their most defining songs: "Fumo", "Siamo chiunque", "Vittima e assassinio", closing, unmistakably, with "CRX". By the end, the music grows progressively more deafening, to the point that ears start ringing under the pressure of the sound. And yet, even amid this escalation, the band keeps its original spirit fully intact. Though profoundly transformed in lineup and musical language, Casino Royale retain a remarkable continuity of attitude, as if time had altered the surface without ever touching its direction.

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