Ten Little Italians

FRANCESCA REMIGI ARCHIPÉLAGOS – IL LABIRINTO DEI TOPI (Emme Produzioni Musicali, 2021)

avant-jazz

Besides Holly Blues, Subconscious Trio, Cicommunity Project and Almoraima, the main projects of jazz drummer Francesca Remigi, who hails from the Bergamo area, are Soul's Spring and Archipélagos. With the former she has recorded just one EP, "2 Beggars" (2019). As Archipélagos, however, she debuts with something more substantial, the long and jagged "Il labirinto dei topi", alongside Claire Parsons (vocals, electronics), Niran Dasika (trumpet), Federico Calcagno (clarinet), Simon Groppe (piano), and Ramon Van Merkenstein (double bass). The grand guignol soundscape driven by piano on the title track is frantically improvised. The nearly 12 minutes of "Scherzo" sandwich two improvisations – one of atonal gesturalism and one of pianistic jazz-funk – between two ecstatic sections at the start and end. The electroacoustic chaos of "The Shooting" is rendered through 8 minutes of vocal experiments, between newscaster-like voices and suppressed street protests, followed by another frantic and at times sardonic funeral elegy. The 7 minutes of "Be Bear Aware" again mix a simmering of electronic vocalisms with a chatter of instruments: together they coalesce into one last parade of thriller-like tones. However dark, dystopian, rarely relaxed (the odd conventional track proves all the more disturbing) and indeed prone to brutality, it's a highly immersive and ever-shifting record that – thanks to shrewd compositional choices – can captivate both through distinct solo passages and vibrant collective jazz interplay, a post-Orwellian concept album in which the metaphor of rats trapped in a maze with no way out pervades, like it or not, the whole structure. If in doubt, one can rely on Parsons's illuminating spoken parts. Connections to the #BlackLivesMatter affair are anything but veiled (Michele Saran, 7/10)

ANGELICA – STORIE DI UN APPUNTAMENTO (Carosello, 2021)

indie-pop

Once upon a time there were Santa Margaret, finalists at the 2015 Targhe Tenco awards in the "Best Debut Work" category. The singer of that project, which also featured Stefano Verderi, guitarist of Le Vibrazioni, was a girl named Angelica. She's exactly the one studying herself in the mirror on the cover of her second solo work, "Storie di un appuntamento". A native of Monza, forever smitten with the entire Beatles songbook, Angelica opens 2021 with eight unreleased tracks that expand and refine the work done on her previous "Quando finisce la festa". It's lively songwriting, with clear nods to the 60s and 70s, at times even danceable, in many ways continuing along the path laid out so far by Lucia Manca (just to suggest some vague kinship), of whom Angelica could represent a further, equally refined, stylistic evolution. A vintage aesthetic that, in the second half of the record, also delivers elegantly delicate moments, as found in the enveloping "L'ultimo bicchiere", "Strip Club" and "Comodini" (Claudio Lancia, 7/10)

PLUHM – CANZONI DELL'IO NUDO (Rum Fixion, 2021)

ambient drone

When you start digging into your soul, really looking deep inside yourself, you never know what you might find there. Lucio Leonardi knows this well: a Sicilian based in the province of Varese, he embarked on his path as an experimental musician with a fondness for drones and modern classical, approached with an almost psychotherapeutic intent. So, on his third work under the name Pluhm, after an album of embryonic songs ("Piccole canzoni sospese") and one of Simon & Garfunkel covers ("Il suono del silenzio"), Leonardi strips himself bare, opening up to listeners under the programmatic title "Canzoni dell'io nudo". A genuine inner journey, the record unfolds like a film, rejecting recurrences and loops, moving instead through a horizontal narrative devoid of words. We encounter anguish, fears and obsessions, while witnessing a gradual acquisition of awareness. Drones and ambient flashes prevail, but on tracks like "La nube s'addensa" and "Il palazzo del rimpianto", "Canzoni dell'io nudo" takes shape through bursts of post-rock and dark shoegaze echoes. Recommended, then, even to those who don't favor intangible avant-garde listening, though the record might have benefited from a budget allowing for greater care and malleability in its sound (Michele Corrado, 7/10)

THE SHAPE – MORNING, PARADISO (LaCantina, 2021)

indie-rock

It took over five years to follow up "Lonely Crowd", their debut album, but the five musicians from Verona in The Shape have made it happen, and once they found themselves confined at home due to the pandemic, they put together the ten tracks that make up "Morning, Paradiso". Theirs is an indie-rock that tries to absorb the attitude (and the sounds) of the more intimate Arctic Monkeys, the ones from the recent "Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino" to be precise ("Sweet Devotion", "Double Vision"), softly psychedelic shades ("Slower, Slower, Slower") and a refined retro taste ("We Can't Have It All"). A few deviations from the main road arrive with the cinematic instrumental "Oh Angelo!", which brings them closer to a certain post-rock and reveals a natural flair for soundtracks, and with the tremolo-drenched surf guitars of "Everytime You Go". Produced by Martino Cuman of Non Voglio Che Clara. In an increasingly conformist world, it's worth noting the band's choice not to release the album on Spotify, making it available exclusively through Bandcamp, an option recently taken up as well by fellow Veronese acts C+C=Maxigross. Small gestures that amount to a formal protest against the Swedish giant, guilty of leaving artists with nothing but crumbs (Claudio Lancia, 6.5/10)

LA RAGAZZA DELLO SPUTNIK – KIKU (Murato, 2021)

songwriter

Name, La Ragazza Dello Sputnik (the title of Murakami's novel), and title, "Kiku" (the Japanese word for "chrysanthemum"), both draw on Japanese culture to convey a certain idea of rebirth. The songbook of this brief debut, however, is at first stylistically problematic and, on the whole, not nearly so optimistic. "In riva al male" alternates a verse of eurodance revivalism with a power-ballad chorus, and the dreamy self-serenade of "Psicofarmaci" essentially resembles a "Un vecchio errore" by Conte filtered through it-pop aesthetics. More cohesively personal and heartfelt are the two anthems placed back to back, one marching ("Origami") and one danceable with a lovely finale of vocal, illusory invocations ("27"). Sentimentality aside, well balanced as it is, the songs of "Ragazza" (real name: Valentina Zanoni, from Verona) are, taken on their own, so-so, even if there's at least one winning line: "Il cuore è una svastica, un toro che mastica" ("Mancanze"). What elevates them, then, is the care for detail, the quality of the sound and the arrangement textures woven by the trio Giorgio Magalini, Federico Sali and Niccolò Ferrari, who here and there also make use of a sax (Zeno Merlini). Co-produced with Costello's. Distributed with an "eco-postcard" meant to be buried in the ground (Michele Saran, 6/10)

DIECI – VITAMINE (42 Records, 2021)

it-pop

In 2021 there's still room for it-pop, perhaps blended with "other" musics. Dieci, real name Roberto Grosso Sategna, can be considered an emerging artist, but certainly not an emerging musician. Over the course of a now decade-long career, he's played in Drink To Me and has backed that band's leader, Cosmo, on his solo tours. The experience built up over these years has given Roberto the confidence to finally present his own original material to the world, even in such a complicated moment and without a starting fanbase. The result is "Vitamine", a decidedly cross-genre record, tuned into summery flavours ("Into The Wild") and tropical-Caribbean exuberance (the intercontinental journey of "Africa"), while at the same time steeped in melancholy ("Scogli") and vintage echoes ("Piccola farfalla nostalgia"). There are plenty of openings towards "world sounds", realized for instance through guitar arpeggios over reggaeton rhythms in "Gelosia", and the soft bossa nova textures of "Le leggi di natura", from which his innate passion for Brazil emerges. Roberto writes, records and produces. All proudly lo-fi and home-made (Claudio Lancia, 6/10)

WHITEFANG – INTO THE WOODS (Talk About, 2021)

folk-rock

Luca Cadeddu Palmas, originally from Oristano, formerly the drummer of Voice Of Dissent, brings to life the solo project WhiteFang, drawing inspiration from Jack London's classic "White Fang". The anthems "Yellow Wheat Fields", "2019" and "Home" set the atmospheric coordinates, somewhat derivative of Justin Vernon, of his "Into the Woods": the first halfway between the austerity of a traditional folk and the languor of soul, the second even more Bon Iver-esque but by contrast ritualistic and then condensed into a distorted psychodrama, the third (a resurrected Dissent track, here in acoustic form) plainly subdued. In "Longing" his cry then meets a Celtic jig, while the nursery-rhyme quality of "Lucy" unfolds in a skipping rhythm with a frenzied finale, and "The Stain" moves from a Kozelek-like lament to an epic folk-punk stomp. A genuine Palmas on acoustic guitar and voice, passionate with touches of virtuosity, measured touches of arrangement including even a synth and a morphoder (Fabrizio Sanna behind the scenes), though a bit too quick to wrap up songs that are otherwise not lacking in air and pathos. Limited-edition vinyl release with poster and craft beers included (Michele Saran, 6/10)

OANA – I FIORI DEL MALE (self-released, 2021)

synth-pop

A cumbersome but certainly striking title, "I fiori del male" marks the debut of Oana: five tracks to which the young singer-songwriter (born in 1992) gives a synth-pop stamp with distinctly darkwave traits. "Liberati", placed at the opening, immediately sets the overall mood, enveloping but never truly reassuring. In "Stai con me!" she adds small doses of autotune, and the scenery takes on it-pop refractions more attuned to the present day, with string flourishes in the finale that make it majestic. The soft but leaden, ever-building circularity of the title track, the synthetic intimacy of "Dentro e fuori", the ethereal sweetness resting on the beats of "Trattienimi", are further arrows shot by Oana, all hitting the mark. Constantly – and pleasantly – poised between the '80s and the new millennium (Claudio Lancia, 6/10)

HOPE AT THE BUS STOP – AND A THOUSAND OTHER THINGS (Iohoo, 2021)

alt-pop

Giovanni Zancan's crooning leads Hope At The Bus Stop and their "And A Thousand Other Things", but the opening "Floating Around", languid and jazzy like a ballad from another era, stands out above all for its shifts in tempo, moving from piano accompaniment to tango rhythms, all the way to ethnic percussion. Likewise "Dreams As Dresses" blends, almost pitting them against each other, hard-rock of glam descent and southern-flavoured folk-rock. Otherwise only "Flowers" (a percussive, distorted attack followed by a sudden mutation into refined ska-jazz) recaptures some of this elegant, crackling theatricality. The debut of a tight-knit outfit from Padua with a solid production that often envelops and glitters. Unfortunately, and it's a real shame, the progressive-pop streak with a Peter Hammill-like nature, shapeshifting in rhythms and styles and intoxicated with timbres and melodies, soon retreats to be overtaken by a pop streak with a Morrissey-like nature, steady and monotone. The closing "Walloping", pleasant as it is, doesn't turn the tide. Preceded by two EPs, "Hope At The Bus Stop" (2015) and "It's Not That" (2017) (Michele Saran, 5.5/10)

NEBÜLA – SUPERNOVAE (Seahorse, 2021)

songwriter

Hailing from Apulia by origin and Rome by upbringing, where she launched the electrosoul project Blumia with fellow local producer Cristiano Meleleo, and Milanese by adoption, where she studies singing and jazz sax while surrounding herself with skilled instrumentalists, Azzurra Buccoliero thus becomes Nebüla for the debut "Supernovae". More limitations than anything else: amateurish, verbose and far from immediate songs that never get off the ground, a withered folk-rock sound that settles for the bare minimum, vocal runs that clog up the listening experience ("Cuore in bacheca", "L'oceano nel letto"), a sparse and almost pointless sax. It's a typical record nostalgic for the bygone '90s that turns its author into a scattered meteor rather than a rising star, an own goal with all the trimmings. Just one chorus that really hits the mark: "I ragazzi di Struda", her Cranberries-esque "Zombie". "The Fuckin' World" is the second best. Paolo Messere on production does what he can (Michele Saran, 4.5/10)

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25/02/2025