Tanca Records

It was March 30, 2015, the day the celebrated independent label Trovarobato released “Die”, the second album from Jacopo Incani's project, Iosonouncane. A full five years had passed since “La macarena su Roma” (2010), an LP that in many ways proved prophetic, thanks to its deeply personal way of reading – ironically and tragically at once – the reality of a new generation of Italians crushed by precarious jobs, easy prey for whichever demagogue happened to be around, always ready to lash out at society's weakest links. According to Incani, the march on Rome of the new millennium would not be carried out by grim, black-clad thugs, but by dancing, smiling crowds of men and women raised on commercial TV, steeped in advertising slogans and summer hit songs, spoon-fed by TV loudmouths and gossip magazines. You could say it's history now.

From the very start Incani had marked a total distance from the Italian indie scene to which he has sometimes been unfairly likened, though he did so while still keeping a certain bond with the singer-songwriter tradition, particularly with Lucio Battisti. In 2015, “Die” still held firmly onto that singer-songwriter thread (“Stormi”), while at the same time venturing down new paths. A track like “Tanca” – to many ears – sounded like something different, like the potential seed of something new. Between the layered synths and the obsessive production, to some it seemed like the possible beginning of a scene far removed from Italian conventions. The years that followed have probably proven right those who sensed as much back in 2015.

2021 is the year of “Ira”, an album that leaves behind every other strand of Incani's previous work, except precisely for “Tanca”, of which it is a direct descendant. It's from that very track that Tanca Records takes its name, the label founded by the Sardinian artist to give space to young musicians who share an artistic vision with the author of “Ira”. The first to release music on Tanca was Vieri Cervelli Montel with “I” (2022), followed more recently by Daniela Pes with “Spira”.

Unfortunately, the incurable Anglophilia of most Italian music criticism seems unable to spot any point of convergence between these albums, and so it fails to acknowledge the emergence of a new, exclusively Italian scene. The habit of thinking of Italian artists merely as inferior imitators of international music is too deeply ingrained to be easily overturned. Particularly striking, in this respect, is the review published by Blow Up (certainly the best print magazine available today), which tries to completely detach Daniela Pes from Incani and from the turning point marked by “Tanca”, attempting instead to align her with excellent musicians such as Anna Von Hausswolff or Chelsea Wolfe, with whom she actually has very little in common.

To try to back up the claim that an Italian scene has already been born and that critics have simply failed to notice, here is a quick excursus through four tracks that could well represent the foundations for its fruitful growth.

Iosonouncane – “Tanca” (from “Die”, 2015)

The track that marked Incani's turning point – we could call it the first track of “Ira”, six years before “Ira” itself. “Tanca” radically overturns the perspective of “La macarena su Roma”, trying to read reality not through the eyes of the Italian woman lying in the sun, but through those of the exhausted migrant who washes up on the beach. The cover art already says it all: a golden beach and a blue sky, with perhaps a woman lying in the distance in the background. But looming above, the word Die creates a strong ambiguity between image and text. The lyrics can be read as the vision of a migrant arriving, now close to death (“falce viene, si trascina nel sale”), on a beach crowded with families on holiday, hoping to be saved, only to find new forms of suffering instead (“fame ha trovato fame”).

The obsessive rhythms and layered electronics mark an enormous step forward from “La macarena su Roma”. From its enigmatic lyrics to the almost obsessive precision of the production, “Tanca” reinvents electronic music while keeping a certain connection to traditional Sardinian music, pointing toward a possible new direction for Italian music. From this point of view, “Tanca” is – so far – Incani's most political track, far more powerful than the already political “La macarena su Roma”, since it stands as a manifesto throwing down a challenge to a new, future generation of musicians.

Iosonouncane – “Hajar” (from “Ira”, 2021)

Six years go by, and no one seems to have picked up the baton left by “Tanca” – so much so that it's Incani himself who ends up carrying on down that same path. Enter “Ira”, one of the most discussed albums of recent years, capable of pushing the intuitions of “Tanca” to their most extreme consequences, severing outright every remaining link to the Italian singer-songwriter tradition still present in “Die”. This is a record that marks not just a difference but a genuine chasm separating it from contemporary Italian music. “Ira” positions itself as total otherness with respect to the present world – in its duration, its structure, its idea of tearing down every linguistic border in an age bombarded relentlessly by thousands of meaningless words (TV, social media). In a world where everything is opinion and truth has long since been buried, Incani refuses to join that chorus, pointing instead toward a new path that, if followed, could sow the seeds for a new musical season. It's hard to single out one track over another, but in terms of sheer power, the wall of sound that is “Hajar” is probably the one that most consistently follows through on the path laid out in 2015.

Vieri Cervelli Montel – “Maestrale” (from “I”, 2022)

Florentine musician Vieri Cervelli Montel, born in 1995, studies jazz music at Siena Jazz University and made his debut in 2021 with a promising, layered and deconstructed take on Mia Martini's “Almeno tu nell’universo”, drawing heavily on Incani's aesthetic. In 2022 he released “I”, his LP debut and the first album on the newly founded Tanca label. Vieri Cervelli Montel is an unusual singer-songwriter, capable of intricate acts of deconstruction out of which melodies that could still be called singer-songwriter fare keep emerging. Italian song, “committed” singer-songwriting and electronic music broadly understood – though certainly in a far less conventional form – coexist here in a space that resists easy labelling. “I” (as in “first”) is a kind of psychoanalytic concept album, born out of a deep process of self-analysis rooted in past trauma (in this case, the premature death of his father). While the album as a whole, blending electronics and intimate singer-songwriting, can be seen as carrying forward the creative drive of Tanca Records, the track most indebted to Incani is undoubtedly “Maestrale”: two furious minutes that recall the most powerful moments of “Ira”. First a vocal line suspended in a void, then completely free-form horns, and finally synths exploding thunderously before the concept resumes its claustrophobic path through empty houses, closed rooms, Escher-like staircases that seem to lead nowhere except back to the same point, over and over.

Daniela Pes – "Carme" (from "Spira", 2023)

The absolute surprise of 2023, the debut of Sardinian musician Daniela Pes is a small miracle in Italian music. Decidedly close in spirit to "Ira", "Spira" suggests that a genuinely new scene has taken shape. From the use of an invented language (as in "Ira") to the solemn, evocative synths, Daniela Pes's music lends Incani's ideas new colours and sensations, through unconventional solutions in which folk-tinged moments blur into synths and electronic textures: the ties to international music are minimal, confirming the distinctly Italian roots of the work. The most representative track might be "Carme", which opens with four repeated notes and an anguished vocal line that leads, past the three-minute mark, into a magnificent apotheosis of synth and voice with a genuinely striking evocative power. If our fixation on foreign sounds didn't blind us, this might be where we'd start to grasp that something distinctly, exclusively Italian is truly emerging.

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