Ten Little Italians

ABISSI – OLTRE (self-released, 2022)

stoner, post-grunge

Milanese trio active since 2018, Abissi is a project formed by Francesco Verri (formerly voice and guitar with Veracrash), Luca Ibba (previously drummer with OdE) and Agostino Marino (voice and guitar in Little Pig). Joining forces, the three wrote and assembled the material collected in “Oltre”, seven tracks for a total of twenty-five minutes that embrace an unmistakably grunge-stoner imagery. Among the most evident references, one can glimpse the shadows of Alice In Chains in the folds of “Unica realtà” and of Stone Temple Pilots in “Grunge Buddha”. And also, why not, the mighty rockiness of Motorpsycho in “Demoni” and certain dark hard-shoegaze shades that strongly recall early Nothing in “Spazzati via”. Flashes of doom and psychedelia complete a rough sonic mix firmly rooted in the 90s. They sing in Italian and self-produce (Claudio Lancia, (7/10)

BOB MEANZA – QUANDARY (Oxmose, 2022)

glitch

“Quandary” by Bob Meanza offers a catalogue of abstract compositions, complete with a prelude in the post-psychedelic touch of unstable glissandos of “Grasshopper”. The double “Seesaw/Quiet Summons” is an alien serenade (trills whirled at the most disparate pitches) with a touch of romantic symphonism that gradually implodes and expands like a critical mass (voices and cosmic chattering are added), and “Sunshine” is another blurred post-psychedelic sonata, dense yet celestial, generated by a drapery of electronic plasma. His art of overlaps and phase-shifts reaches a peak of madness in “Reveal”, disjointed between two stentorian but conflicting rhythms, a cold chant, a disturbed strumming and a dub bass, and a peak of darkness in “The Stream”, pulsing and dripping with acid-rock distortion in the classic style of “Welcome To The Machine” by Pink Floyd. The album's widespread crypticism above all clots into dissonance across the 8 minutes of “Unreadable Scroll”, with sharp electronic sheets and concrete turmoil giving a hair-raising succession of events and signs that appear and disappear, without any footholds or developments, moreover. Third album from the Verona-born digital experimenter relocated to Berlin (real name Michele Pedrazzi), a compendium of experiences and techniques returning from his collaborations under the name Meanza&De and with Astma, as well as his involvement with the Berlin Soundpainting Orchestra and Toxydoll, based on improvised jams, then disintegrated and finally reintegrated with a kind of calm chaos. If not the best in terms of composition – it often flows in a continuous stream on the wave of pure impulsiveness – at the same time the temperature, intensity and density reached by his happiest ideas hit the mark, along with the courage to push into an open magma of non-genres. Alex Baboian's guitar work is essential, but there's also a vocal cameo from Bianca Guitton (Michele Saran, 6.5/10)

DUOCANE – TEPPISTI IN AZIONE NELLA NOTTE (self-released, 2022)

grunge

Together since the days of Banana Mayor, and later also in Turangalila, Bari natives Stefano Capozzo and Giovanni Solazzo branch off into their own project, Duocane, which debuts on the long-form with “Teppisti in azione nella notte”. The feverish metalcore frenzy with a free-sax closing in “Entropia ed esco zoccola”, the petulant hard-rock split by a Bonzo Dog-style interlude in “Algo Ritmo”, the Korn-esque crossover stuffed with disjointed little riffs in place of vocals in “Old Man Yells At Clouds”, the depressed air with violin played western-style in “Biascica apri tutto”, and the bewitched little ending in the broken, irregular “Il sonno degli statali” are among their best creations. (Power-)pop concessions, both football-themed incidentally, are “Neqroots” and “Zona giallo-rossa”. Presented, with an Elio-style non-curse word, as a typical heavily distorted bass-drums duo, in reality they use whatever comes into their heads: guitar, keyboards, strings, vibraphone, alto sax, not to mention the comic use of a cappella vocals and the hovering dadaist spirit. Follow-up to two EPs, “Puzza di giovani” (2019) and “Sudditi” (2020). A short and goliardic record, but not too much so: between the lines it carries, albeit without brilliant eloquence, its own updated social commentary (Michele Saran, 6.5/10)

ENRICO FAZIO, GIANCARLO NINO LOCATELLI – 7 ROCKS (We Insist!, 2022)

free improvisation

A few months after the inconclusive, guest-filled hodgepodge of “Round Dance” (2022), double bassist Enrico Fazio shows off his essentialist side with a single partner, Milanese clarinettist Giancarlo Locatelli (usually a fixed duo with pianist Alberto Braida), with a cycle of duets documented on “7 Rocks”. Some are not particularly brilliant dialogues (“Organogena”, “Clastica”), others are rather juxtaposed monologues (the suspended, questioning “Chimica”) in which the two experiment with modal scales. Others still push their respective instruments toward noise-avant-garde territory, as in the 10 minutes of “Effusiva”, in which the bass then starts beating a very fast tempo while the clarinet solfeggios seraphically in slow motion, or into a vortex of extreme frequencies, as in “Filoniana”. Recorded in a single session in 2014 – on the anniversary of the liberation – with good sound quality (mastering by Gianmaria Aprile), it could easily be mistaken for intellectual-sounding furniture music. Instead, it reveals valuable depths of enigma, granting it the curiosity it deserves. Released by We Insist! Records for its “In Viaggio” reissue series (Michele Saran, 6.5/10)

EUGENIA POST MERIDIEM – LIKE I NEED A TENSION (Bronson, 2022)

alt-pop

Eugenia Fera sets up the Eugenia Post Meridiem moniker drawing on the folk-pop blueprint led by new pixie-girls like Big Thief, Hop Along, Mothers, Snail Mail (Any Other for Italy), so that the debut album “In Her Bones” (2019), despite a certain underlying ambition, rests almost entirely on the leader's bleating register and barely at all on the three supporting members (Giovanni Marini, Matteo Traverso, Matteo Vignolo). The double single “Life Sleeper” (2021) loosens things up, highlighting, especially in the Kate Bush-esque “Lato B”, a few extra psychedelic accents. That's the setup for the next step, “Like I Need A Tension”: it's precisely the Bush-style makeover that strips the vibrato from Fera's voice, making it bolder as a result. At the same time the supporting players step much more into the light, so that in “Unchained Will” what wins out is the (retro) atmosphere of meetings and clashes, enchanted pauses and fresh starts. Fera, for her part, nails a few refrains: the slowed-down one accompanied by digital distortion in the syncopated rush of “Around My Neck”, the one submerged beneath abrupt, formless fanfares in the St Vincent-esque r&b of “Willpower”, and the one styled like a France Gall pop ditty with a graceful, toxic tribalism in “Whisper”. The Ligurian quartet continues its construction-deconstruction of a melodic post-song, elusive, sometimes faded, fractured – even angular – and often rich in disorienting details. The spell breaks in the second half, when they once again fall into longueurs and lose their bearings (bone of contention: the slow-pop “Tiny Prospectives”) (Michele Saran, 6/10)

METIDE – CIRCADIANS EP (self-released, 2022)

alt-metal

Bergamo native Omar Carissimi puts together the Metide quartet leaning on his multi-instrumentalism (guitar and electronic effects) and even more on his vocal style, well split between grunge's plaintive side and metalcore's furious one, in the manner of Fear Factory's Burton Bell Fear Factory. Their first concept album, “Solution” (2019), sounds this impressionistic, watercolored rather than brutal. The subsequent 15-minute two-part suite “Circædian”, on the cassette EP “Circadians”, stays true to these stylistic coordinates. At first it's entirely an ambient piece, transmitting voices stuttering over an electronic backdrop and a creeping distortion. Then follows a Mark Lanegan-esque blues hymn with sparingly doled-out accompaniment (or a Mark Hollis fronting Tool) whose metal rage doesn't explode all at once, instead passing smoothly into a growl with only a slight emphasis. The second part is titled “Reprise” but is in fact a necessary continuation highlighting the theatrical tragedy of this schizoid duet. A post-metal canvas lit up in black in which the details – no real riffs, few solos or exciting progressions – submit to a somewhat slow, sprawling marathon of undeniable monumental importance, with a deficient style sacrificed for a good cause. For once, it's the overall message that matters most: mitigating depression with obsessiveness. Free download (Michele Saran, 6/10)

SABÙ ALAIMO – STAR DELLA PROVINCIA (Arancia, 2022)

songwriter

Still bolstered by his first band experience with Sabù e La Vigilia, Palermo native Salvatore “Sabù” Alaimo debuts with what will remain his best album, the decadent and shadowy “Logica egoistica” (2013). It's followed by a far more polite “Generazione digitale” (2017), which also lays the groundwork for the third album, “Star della provincia”, starting with the spotless romantic dedication of “E' Palermo che ti piace” and then in a couple of Toto Cutugno-esque rhyming tarantellas with strings, painfully bittersweet, “La giostra” and “Sconosciuti”. For its emotional center of gravity it leans somewhat toward Ligabue, but tempers the Emilian singer's vigorous prophecy of everyday defeat with an almost priestly inspiration, resulting in a hinted-at alternation between calm (“Caffetterie e Call Center”) and resolve, though less successfully so (“Il pazzo”). An album not lacking in lyrical awareness and arrangement instinct. However, the lack of cohesion undermines it: the title track “Star della provincia” is actually a single dating back to 2020, produced by Riccardo Piparo in an old-school Italian pop mode, while the rest, fortunately more serious and biting even with a few lapses, comes from a later session produced, in part, with Leo Curiale. It's also patchworked in terms of the studios used (his own Arancia Records, Play Studio, Cantieri 51) and even wasteful in its use of musicians, more than twenty in all (Michele Saran, 5.5/10)

RADIO TRAPANI – T.V.B. KIND OF LOVE (Spazio Dischi, 2022)

neo-soul

Radio Trapani (Dario Trapani, Domodossola) approaches solo creativity after a diploma in jazz and electronic music and a stint in the Netherlands, but with the breakup concept album “T.v.b. Kind Of Love” he proves content with a song-form that is mostly of scant substance. The “spot” that opens it, “Jealousy”, packs into a minute and a half more or less all the production and vocal techniques that the rest of the record then simply dilutes further, especially the likeable novelty of “Salix Babylonica” and the aged-piano post-chansonnier turn of “The Afternoon”. Hooks into a possible umpteenth revival of “new romantic” pop can be found in the Romanthony-esque “Go” and in the even more glibly derivative “The Loss And The Gain”. An album self-described as “genreless” in common accord with the fluid, non-binary aesthetic of 2020s social-media neo-progressivism, it's in reality a debut that works only as a rough sketch, oversaturated with sounds on one hand and as threadbare as a work-in-progress on the other. If anything, what's truly fluid is her vocal delivery – perfect pronunciation included – one of the few in recent times that doesn't look out of place carrying a cosmopolitan bearing (Michele Saran, 4.5/10)

KABUKI DREAM – ABSTRACT (Veidt, 2022)

electro

Having broken away from Banda Dei Sospiri, Cesena natives Jacopo Gabanini and Francesco Bartoli renamed themselves Kabuki Dream and set their debut “Progress And Total Control” (2019) on a gothic rock course; they then ferried themselves over to synthesizers across a trilogy of EPs, before finally completing the electronic turn on their second album, “Abstract”. The first two tracks represent the best the album has to offer: the title track “Abstract”, Enigma-esque (a Gregorian hymn riding a syncopated pulse), and “Timeless”, a mournful adagio for strings delivered in flamenco style. What's left are mere sketches, from “Giorgio MorOrwell”, a rave-techno sketch, to “Cyber-Ronin”, an ambient-techno sketch vaguely in the vein of Boards Of Canada, from “Let Me Be Inebriated”, a possible foundation for a sophisticated Italo-disco song, to “Lethargic Pachiderma”, a stab at a Dario Argento horror soundtrack, even an attempt at cubist folktronica à la Books packed into the 8 minutes of “Verità non verità”, plus a whole series of other barely identifiable assemblages. Produced by Jack Ceccarelli, who also contributes guitar, and inspired by a series of (abstract) paintings by Matteo Babbi, the record isn't short on passion here and there, but execution-wise it's a disaster, a mess of botched loops, random effects and crudely handled presets, rhythm lines sequenced any old way. The new electronic music is very hard, as the Skiantos would say, because it's too easy to make. This amateurishness does find a sense of purpose, however - unintentionally - in the two sung tracks, mad quasi-psychedelic lullabies (“Your Coaches”, “Away”) tossed into the tracklist but out of context (Michele Saran, 4.5/10)

SHIFTY SPLIT – ONLY AFTER (Brutture Moderne, 2022)

psych-rock

Originally from Ivrea, Renato Elia was one of the key players in Bela Lugosi - the Jennifer Gentle before Jennifer Gentle - before deciding to leave what would become the Fasolo-Gastaldello band and found his own neo-psychedelic project, Shifty Split. Twenty years after the first “Before After” (2002), plus a few subsequent albums and projects, comes a sort of answer record, “Only After”. Compared with the debut's sketches of deviant, toxic post-Velvet Underground jams - however naively self-indulgent, and not as effective as Jennifer Gentle's contemporaneous output - the new album comes across as a withered old man. The guitar that once foamed with lysergic filaments now strums off to the side in an Orientalizing electro-pop (“The House”) or in an ethereal salsa (“Behind The Corner”), fading almost to nothing (the even more lifeless “Oil Fable”), only really coming back to life for a country ballad (“New Shape”). The only change of pace is the male-female garage-pop of “Brace Yourself”, which nonetheless sounds like a demo at best, and the only experiment is “The Promise”, a sort of amateurish remix of a languid George Harrison song, further drowned in reverb. A concept album devoted to the figure of A. Jacob, first embraced by Elia live in acoustic form and then brought to record with arranger Francesco Giampaoli. A union of exceptional listlessness. It's flat even when - on the seven-minute title track “Only After” - a genuine supporting cast (Massimiliano Amadori, Marco Bovi, Jan Falinski, Francesca Gallo, Diego Sapignoli) emerges in fits and starts (Michele Saran, 4/10)

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17/03/2025