Ten Little Italians

FRANCESCA REMIGI – THE HUMAN WEB (Habitable, 2022)

avant-jazz

Having already scored an initial breakthrough under the name Archipélagos with “Il labirinto dei topi” (2021), Francesca Remigi (Bergamo) outdoes herself with “The Human Web” under her own name, a record that's at once coherent and explosive, deeply personal too in the multifaceted ease with which she handles an imposing array of resources: four vocalists, two violinists, five saxophonists, three guitarists, five bassists, bass clarinet, piano (prepared too), synthesizers, electronics, plus her own drums, more malleable than ever. Her skill thus comes through not only as a composer and arranger but also as a performer and conductor. The density is overwhelming on tracks like “Mere Appearance & True Being”: an avant-garde introduction, a folk chant, a swing duet, piano improvisation and a gorgeous cabaletta for solo piano and ghostly vocalizing, all constantly reshaped by live electronics. The title track is no less striking (a dilapidated soundscape, musical-theatre singing, tragic vocalizing, hallucinated horns, electronic whirlpools, final death throes), while “Inside The Algorithm” turns just slightly more outward-facing, a dystopian sci-fi staging built from a sinister piano trio-sonata and a disjointed free-for-all of synth and distorted guitar. Killick Hinds' “quartertone” guitar and spoken samples carve out the post-Stravinsky “Trance.” Anais Drago's atonal violin, the sly horns of Federico Calcagno and Andrew Saragossi, and Marta Giulioni's scat vocals weave together the dissonant “Metamorfosi.” Calcagno again, together with Heikki Ruokangas' acoustic guitar and Stefano Zambon's upright bass, bring to life a jester-like, twelve-tone, noise-rock trio piece, “Follia.” Drago alone closes things out in glory with the vertiginous expressionism of “Home Body,” one of the greatest violin solos of the post-jazz era. These complex, dramatic compositions — intricate, true to the title, down to the last detail and without any more spoken narration — recount a subtle apocalypse of reason's sleep and loss of consciousness, a catastrophe entirely of the intellect, built through multiplication and overload. But it's also, however indirectly, an optimistic message of unity, of faith in human fellowship. There are few precedents in Italian avant-garde jazz, perhaps none, for a work this free, unified and yet made of multitudes, in which everything is crooked, skewed, ineffably “twisted.” Last but not least, Carolina “Caro” Nebbia handles the artwork. Dedicated to her sister Laura. The collaboration with Hinds continues on “Empowered Kind” (2022) (Michele Saran, 7.5/10)

GLI INSETTI NELL’AMBRA – 2072 (Skank Bloc, 2023)

art-punk

A Parisian expatrié and esteemed academic, Bologna-born Lapo Boschi has scattered neuroses to the four winds (I Professionisti, Le Cose Furiose, Ludwig Van Bologna) before thawing out Gli Insetti Nell'Ambra, back with their third album on his own Skank Bloc Records. Having settled into a trio lineup after starting out with a drum machine, they present themselves with an artwork that winks at Talking Heads, though the Big Apple bitten into here by the music is really the one picked clean by DNA (with new arrival Hijiri Shimamoto standing in for Ikue Mori), skewered on a sharp post-punk fork in the style of Gang Of Four. Yet the latent Bologna-ness of this eccentric down-and-out gets its revenge in the lyrics, indebted to the demented '77 movement for which he's never hidden his admiration: declaimed with an affected rolled r somewhere between blasé and whiny, they unravel in a riot of crazed, childish wordplay ("Non importa se comporta che passiamo per cretini/ Se la cosa li riposa, che ci chiamino bambini", he declares in "Lallazione"), without shying away from multilingual hybrids ("Thè imbarcato in un trip") or even homespun grammelot ("Antifiamo travolta"). The jumbled rhythmic hysteria occasionally gives way to neurasthenic waltzes ("Pugni") or dry angularity in the style of the Feelies ("Satori"), with Boschi's anguished vocals (half Tom Verlaine, half Robert Smith) grasping the curtain of this little theatre. Anyone who's never quite gotten over Green Gartside's about-face can take comfort here (Ossydiana Speri, 7/10)

L.D.C. – NAPALM! NAPALM! NAPALM! (Emme, 2022)

modern creative

The moniker L.D.C. 4TET brought together four young exponents of Italian creative music: Tuscans Francesco Arrighi, pianist, member of Fonterossa Open Orchestra and co-author of "Anagrammi" (2020) with Cristiano Bocci and Mara Lepore; Alessandro Abbate, guitarist; Simone Bracci on bass; and Marco Salvador on drums (already of Esho Funi and the open-ended Parking Attendants). Having lost Bracci along the way, the remaining three take the opportunity to make their output even more distinctive, renaming themselves simply L.D.C. and recording a 5-track album, "Napalm! Napalm! Napalm!". The first two tracks are small masterpieces that could be labelled post-industrial chamber music but increasingly resist categorization. "Ti ammazzo hai capito?!" (10 minutes) opens with a sort of factory-floor ecstasy, an electric piano in swooning-ballad mode flirting with the pulse of milling machines, jammed presses, short-circuiting printing presses, before turning into a placid jam hurled into a bottomless chasm of acid-cybernetic textures. "Roots Pulling Up" (11 minutes) is another tortuous post-tonal journey, but this time drawn out through silences and rarefactions, moments of disorientation and empty space. The other three pieces are already closer to the normalized format of an avant-garde trio, but at least "Tabulone" rises to an improvisation bordering on the impossible, with withered tempos and harmonies magnetized into the upper register, imploding at the close into an electronic nebula. The starting point of this pseudo-learned, para-academic discourse (new wave at the conservatory?) is developed with a spirit of vision, wise drive without excess. Three instrumentalists at ease in an exploration that reaches down to the subatomic particles of each individual timbre. Fresh boldness, at last. Cover artwork by Laura Martelli (Michele Saran, 7/10)

STEREONOON – PLACES WE CAN GO HIDE (Digital Noises, 2023)

soul-funk-jazz

A brilliant collective that sprouted up in a quadrilateral stretching between Milan, Verona, Brescia and Emilia-Romagna, Stereonoon reach the milestone of their debut album with "Places We Can Go Hide". That's not quite their absolute first outing, which came in the summer of 2020, in the thick of the pandemic crisis, with the release of the single "Steppin' Out", a cover of the famous hit written by Joe Jackson. That song already showcased the hallmarks of their sound, rooted in a period ideally straddling the Eighties, picking up the legacy of the scene tied to white soul and sophisticated pop, and the following decade, with its acid jazz-funk leanings. Already on the EP "Yeah. And Stuf" (March 2021), and even more so across the ten tracks of "Places We Can Go Hide", the band builds pleasantly retro, classy atmospheres (the nu-soul of "So Well" is among the most successful moments), with the odd danceable cut (the energetic "Everyone Says") or funky number ("I Don't Mean", "Talk Is Cheap"). Anna Polinari's voice takes center stage, well supported by the rest of the group. Max Tozzi is the mastermind behind the collective: he handles the writing of all the songs (together with Anna), as well as production, mixing, mastering, bass, guitars and keyboards. Xantoné Blacq, a London musician often found alongside Amy Winehouse, guests on piano on a couple of tracks, Emiliano Vernizzi handles saxophone, Riccardo Dolci electric guitars, Giacomo Ganzerli drums, with a few trumpet incursions from Matteo Pontegavelli. If you loved Style Council, Shakatak and early Level 42 back in the mid-Eighties, Stereonoon will undoubtedly prove a welcome surprise (Claudio Lancia, 6.5/10)

LAMIEE. – CRUJ (Carton, 2023)

noise

LAMIEE., the main project of experimenter and improviser Nicholas Remondino, a drummer and percussionist from Alba who has also lent his talents to Sonoria, AnanasnnA, Vorti Trio, Iosonouncane and Vieri Cervelli Montel, oscillates between solipsistic research and group coordination, often in a duo setting (Limina Ensemble, Dròlo Ensemble, ŌTONN, Byenow, OORT., Tweeedo), going back to his very first composition, "Limina" (2020). A sharp early highlight, though, is a 19-minute "Fisica" (2021), a drumming downpour of percussive electroacoustic layers eventually thinned out by Martin Mayes's polyphonic horn. After a few minor releases, "Cruj" adopts the model of the electronic symphony. The first movement (17 minutes) is a jet of static noise and electrical flickers that, amid thunderclaps of distortion, mutates from aseptic to apocalyptic and then symphonic, cut off sharply for a final 4 minutes of new-age catharsis. The second, the "pop" moment, wouldn't look out of place on the early Animal Collective albums (or on a remix EP). The highlight is the third track, 8 minutes long, a blinded ultracore hurled beyond the sound barrier, adorned with post-psychedelic vocal wails and plagued by dissonant flashes and lashes, a Dntel pulped inside a spacetime turbine. The fourth serves merely as a brief, hyper-jungle, hyper-chromatic close. "Cruj" means "broken" in Piedmontese dialect, damaged, like the source material (battered synthesizers and "damaged samples") lifted from the source and slapped without ceremony into atomic loops of rare power, jittery if not addling, aggressive if not barbaric, barely sculpted, scarcely probed. An experience more for the mind than the heart (and just as well, or you'd risk a heart attack), a rough draft of a hypothetical non-harmonic language yet to come. Artwork by Nicola "Lay Llamas" Giunta (Michele Saran, 6.5/10)

PITCHTORCH – I CAN SEE THE LIGHT FROM HERE (autoprod., 2023)

roots-rock

Between Florence and Milan. Mario Evangelista (Gutbuckets), the mastermind, and the rhythm section of Danilo Gallo (Guano Padano) and Marco Biagiotti (Vickers) form the folk-rock supergroup Pitchtorch for a self-titled debut album (2019) in which, for now, only the stripped-down (the acoustic folk tune "Between You And Me") and instrumental sides ("Seashore" and especially the alt-country meditation "Actually Is Fading") really win out. The second album, "I Can See The Light From Here", instead gives proper weight and proper breath to every component, not least by having no qualms about absorbing the contemporary post-punk revival fad. So, aside from the single "Jack Of All Trades", "Sometimes" becomes a genetic cross between Psychedelic Furs and Grant Lee Buffalo, "Time" a cross between Joy Division and Wilco, and "That's Our Blues" a cross between Morphine, Lee Scratch Perry and Los Lobos. The acoustic-rural element also raises the stylistic stakes, in the shuffles of "Flying Ants", with a religious fervor lit up by chamber woodwinds, and of "Ask The Dust" and the confessional "Mother", with oceanic percussion underlining their hypnotic pull. The record doesn't rival the masters it subtly evokes, but it's smart enough not to fall into that trap. Lyrics aside, which feel a bit rehashed, it scores points for passion and soul, for a radio-friendly appeal that never feels cheap, and for a few details that will interest more discerning ears, such as the jam-band flourishes and mannerisms (condensed in "Downtown Livorno"). "That's Our Blues" is actually a Gutbuckets leftover reclaimed. Kudos to the horn guests: Francesco Bigoni (clarinet) and Beppe Scardino (baritone sax) (Michele Saran, 6.5/10)

DEIAN – FIGURE (Innabilis et al., 2023)

songwriter

Deian Martinelli, from Turin, resurfaced with the experiment-pastiche "Caro alfabeto" (2019), a "record-interview" put together by Giacomo Laser in which he previewed some of the songs from his real comeback, "Figure". The danceable "Figure strane", which smells of Gaetano, Donovan and Eels, is the latest addition to the canon of confessional, emphatic loser anthems. At its best, the collection dances right between that anthemic quality and a subtle variety-theatre irony: "Mostro" is decked out in a wallpaper of electronic doo-wop choruses, the piano-led "Robot" flaunts a concert-hall fervor and a tenderly melancholic one-minute instrumental tail, the vaudeville of "Adamo" sprints into a merengue variation, the "Magritte-like" "Questa non è una canzone" surrenders to a refrain lost in hallucinogenic haze and a babel of adjectives, somewhere between nervous breakdown and ecstasy, and "Zagor" draws on the serenade but briefly shoots off into orbit. In between, there's a trickle of jokes and quips, songs dangerously drawn to it-pop as well as experimental attempts (the cosmic crescendo chatter of "Risvegli"), which don't really speak to each other. Without the Lorsoglabro moniker that had carried him to the peak of "Special Price" (2014), though he still finds his brother Tristan on production duties and a cameo from Alberto Moretti on bass, the record has a wavering, melting, repetitive structure with a fondness for formalist flourishes, but it's also a sincere, heartfelt record full of clever rhyming couplets, sly semantic wordplay and syntax, without easy concessions to didacticism. Four-way co-production: Innabilis, Gigiabooking, Tega, Sounzone (Michele Saran, 6/10)

ANIMAUX FORMIDABLES – WE ARE ALL ANIMALS (autoprod., 2023)

garage-rock

Disguised under black latex in feline silhouette, the two members of Animaux Formidables (he on vocals and guitar, she on drums) formed in 2022 and immediately debuted with an instant record, "We Are All Animals", a hair's breadth from "hear one, hear them all", a rekindling of the trail blazed by White Stripes, Kills, Black Keys and our own Bud Spencer Blues Explosion. Both title track and album/band manifesto, "We Are All Animals" chops up a classic 2000s power-blues riff into the classic booming 2/2 time. Small variations include the sardonic stomp of "Follow Me", the marching, rumbling "Just A Monday" and, above all, the pared-down "Shake It" and the circus-like, tempo-shifting "Fortress Of Solitude". On the citation front, snatches of Kinks filter through "Unfair", while "Dance Into The Void" aims to import some of the repetitive obsessiveness of Teenage Jesus. The last two songs, which the duo intends as proper "songs" rather than mere short assaults, disappoint instead, being out of their depth. Fuzz-blues guitar with glam colorings, a few impishly catchy riffs, so-so melodies, a wave-pop voice more in the vein of Sting and Bono than a garage shouter, cadences with a skeletally basic punch. The best thing here is the old-fashioned styling, the vintage stereophony with which Marco Fasolo's production seasons the already-heard (Michele Saran, 5.5/10)

FERNWEH – TRÍPTIKO (self-released, 2023)

new age

The three musicians from La Spezia making up Fernweh (Emilio Bagnato, Lorenzo Cosci, Daniel Palumbo) debuted with a self-titled EP (2018) steeped in post-rock, but then drew inspiration from H. Bosch's masterpiece, "The Garden of Earthly Delights" triptych, for a half-hour electronic suite in the style of Vangelis and Kitaro, "Tríptiko". The problem is that, rather than keeping it compact as a single composition, the three set about splitting it up, indeed crumbling it, into short or very short pieces that never amount to more than a single tile in the mosaic: the organ-anthem sketch of "Adam And Eve", the ternary-time music box of "The Garden Of Earthly Delights", the downtempo vignette of "Animal Symmetries". Glimmers of pre-Baroque music flicker here and there, most evident in the Wendy Carlos-style synthetic rendering of Josquin Desprez's "Kyrie" ("The Garden Of Eden"). The "Inferno" section limits itself to adding on-trend stylistic touches, as in "Seven Deadly Sins", which is supposed to represent the moment of drama but settles for a repetitive progression with a trap-style 808, and "In Ecstatic Circularity", a "fugato" of arpeggiators in intercom-quality synthwave handwriting. Commissioned by the Princess Of Asturias foundation, presented in 2019 as a multimedia show in collaboration with Rino Tagliaferro and the Karmachina studio in Oviedo, later turned into an installation at Palazzo Reale. Composed (remotely), finally, and recorded with mastering by David Campanini. Appreciable, taken on its own terms, for its meticulous craftsmanship in layering sounds, including natural ones. As a transposition of Bosch's art it misses the mark: no grandeur, little surrealism, even less chaos; the avant-garde evaporates, and archival nostalgia wins out instead (Michele Saran, 5/10)

RUDY MARRA – MORFINA (Viceversa, 2023)

blues-rock

That “Morfina” is being promoted by Rudy Marra as inspired by Bulgakov's story of the same name comes across like a Dantean “tresca de le misere mani” (a tangle of wretched hands). In reality, right from the start — right from the title — this looks like the work of a Mark Sandman tribute band, complete with a featuring spot from a thawed-out Dana Colley in person. The songs range from Morphine imitation (“Sto perdendo tempo”, “Voglio il lavoro”), to declared Italianized covers of Morphine (“Su e giù” is “Let's Take A Trip Together”, “Corde” is “Thursday”), all the way to outright Morphine plagiarism (“Oggi sto guasto” steals from “A Head With Wings”, “Di mercoledì” butchers “Cure For Pain”, and “Fino a quando?” copies “Candy” wholesale without crediting it), not to mention a heartfelt dedication to the band's leader (“Mark e Sabine”). A rather aimless, nostalgia-driven project for the seasoned Galatina rocker after a fifteen-year break. Good for those who've never heard of the original band? Not even then. Marra's vocals are no Sandman, the bass lacks the dark spark of his legendary two-string instrument, and Colley merely clones Colley. The rest doesn't fare any better: “Diesel” is a reworked Finardi song, “Obscured By Clouds” is yet another forgettable cover (Pink Floyd). What saves the record from disaster are the familiar arms of Ionian folk in the closing tracks, even if out of place (“Filare de tabbaccu”, “Nonostante me”), and the one moment of genuine creative vitality, the delirious noir-jazz of “Sei un artista tu?” (though even this might recall Morphine once again: go back and listen to “My Brain”) (Michele Saran, 4/10)

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22/03/2025