Beatrice Antolini - Beatrice in Wonderland

From the conservatory to international classical music competitions, by way of her first teenage-riot punk bands streaked with hefty dark-industrial touches, all the way to a dazzling, Disney-tinged psych-pop: Beatrice Antolini is simply one of the most genuine rising talents of the Italian indie underground. A knack for an enchanted, at times elusive sound, traceable to a kaleidoscope of lively Van Dyke Parks-flavored colors, often invites dizzying comparisons. Try picturing the two Psapp, dressed in Western garb, dueling it out with the Gong crew, and you'll have a fairly precise idea (?) of this fascinating young woman's style. Likewise, her voice now sounds playful, fully anchored in a fairy-tale mold, elusive in its barely sketched high notes, now dense and full-bodied as it brings out the shadowy nuances of her melodies.

Our young muse was born in Macerata, where she began playing piano at the age of three (!), before selling her soul to punk (and its offshoots) as a teenager. She later moved to Bologna, graduated as an actress from the Teatro Colli school in 2002, and found her first "commissions" for some of the company's stage productions, eventually going on to compose music for Silvia Roncaglia's show "Favolose Principesse".

It may well be the soundtrack to an imaginary short film that inspired the young woman from Macerata in writing her first work, Big Saloon (Madcap Collective, 2006).

Beatrice recorded it within the walls of her own home, playing literally everything: piano, synth, guitar, bass, percussion of every kind, cello, harmophone, armadillo, ashtray, pencil, metronome, and plenty of other obscure gadgets brand a disorienting debut. The synth's humorous flights of fancy twist the jazzy timbre pretty much everywhere, simulating atonal dispersions and the sense of annihilation of an Alice (dis)lost in the woods.

Graceful pianistic digressions invite the imaginary clientele of the grand salon to step inside; the initial feeling is one of stumbling upon the white herald of the Queen of Hearts. The rhythm section of the more cadenced pieces and the piano's various restless isolationisms echo the jazz colours of early-twentieth-century New Orleans: an envelope of synthesized swirls and vocal sensuality animates the silent backdrop of a surrealist painting.

Big Saloon is a work that pours all its fine detailing into the old-fashioned sonic digressions of vintage animated shorts, stitching itself together with electric modernism in just the right proportions. The album would be reissued the following year thanks to a collaboration between Pippola Music, Madcap Collective and Audioglobe distribution, earning a modest post-MySpace, post-"niche" success.

Two years spent on a string of strange and disorienting live shows, some alongside heavyweights like Bugo and Baustelle, plus scattered acclaim across the music-loving corners of the web, preceded her first official entry into a recording studio, far from home, backed as always by Marco Fasolo, singer and guitarist of Jennifer Gentle.

With her second album, A Due (Urtovox, 2008), she quickly moves from cartoonish, Tim Burton-esque atmospheres to a rawer, more stripped-down vision of the whole harmonic structure, as she herself has stated. Leaving the comfort of home, facing different expectations, and feeling the growing pressure of a small but devoted and demanding following push the seductive Antolini towards a more mature, studied approach.

On her second outing, the skilled pianist, disguised as a schoolmistress of contamination, plays at being a velvet-voiced entertainer, smuggling in the ethics of a punkette in transition.

A Due is again dominated by eccentric numbers of sultry vaudeville, Broadway-style music-hall, danceable rhythms and psychedelic melodies, as in "Modern Lover", the single "Funky Show", and the rhythmic exoticism of "Pop Goes To Saint Peter" and "A New Room For A Quiet Life".

While the tribal-atonal recital of "Taiga" contradicts the acoustic bacchanal in fieri, her frenzied piano often acts as a counterpoint to aphrodisiac vocals (the vintage-psych "Morbidalga" and "Secrete Cassette", with a melody worthy of Jennifer Gentle), occasionally tipping over into neurotic lust ("New Manner", and especially "Sugarise").

The die is cast by a more mature Alice, at times lacking real self-control over her ambitions. The result nonetheless carries some downright seductive passages, though at times overshadowed by the greater authenticity and impulsive genuineness of the previous record.

Thus crowned the new heroine of Italian alternative music, and buoyed by a steady run of stages and live events, Beatrice Antolini returns with BioY, a fresh touch of class that shows her grown technically, especially in her deep, velvety voice and in the even more exotic inflections of her songwriting. Through tracks like "Piece Of Moon", "Eastern Sun" and "BioY", she blends tropicalia overtones, bossa techno, industrial refrains and orchestral veils. A clearer, more crystalline songwriter emerges on two piano ballads, "Planet" and "Paranormal", while "Night SHD" again attempts to translate psychedelia into technological terms, as she had on the previous record. However disjointed, fragmented and even troubled, BioY is as capable of completing the transition launched by A Due as it is of starting a new chapter, forever driven by the tenacity of her exploration.

But the fourth album, Vivid, has none of her creative intelligence left, and ends up bowing to chart-friendly pop ("My Name Is an Invention", "Open", "Transmutation"), probably her new fixation, or the result of a stressful period.

The Beatitude EP, released a little over a year later, promptly sets things right: the litany "Spider Are Not Insects", just ninety seconds long, brings back the frenzy of her psychedelic beginnings; "Dna" once again highlights her keyboard skills; "With Love" explores Tori Amos's more eccentric side, turning it into a fairy-tale waltz; even the new foray into pop with the tear-jerking ballad "Anyma L" has a more adult construction, giving meaning to the latest turns in her songwriting career.

The fifth album by the multi-instrumentalist from the Marche region is provocative and scorching right from its cover art. Beyond the aesthetics, once again impeccably crafted, L'AB is an intimate work, packed to the core with personal reflections on the relentlessness of the world and its absurd dynamics. Beatrice Antolini also continues, undeterred, to nurture that deeply personal microcosm of sounds, variations and harmonic ideas — and whatever else you want to throw in — that remain decidedly unique, impossible to pin down or match anywhere else, at least within Italy.

There's a lot going on in L'AB. An intriguing introspection sets the pace across its nine tracks. It's an album ruled by supreme moments of pure unease towards the unknown and the mysterious, as shown amid the electric shadows of "Subba": a melancholy ballad, melodically and rhythmically plunging towards the bottom of a ravine like a fallen angel sent to probe the wounds of a world that's ever harder to decipher. "Second Life" initially moves along the same cadences, only later veering towards harmonies that sound as if born from a modern-day Kate Bush or Tori Amos (take your pick), buoyed and propelled by delicate electronic variations laid down as a carpet with absolute diligence.

The bright, irreverent vaudeville streak that marked her divine debut, dated 2006 (!), resurfaces in "What You Want", before a straight kick drum unexpectedly bursts in halfway through the track, sweeping practically everything along with it in a crescendo of instrumental diversions worthy of Psapp. Meanwhile, the loneliness recounted in "I'm Feeling Lonely", with its lulling piano and subdued vocals, and the deep sarcasm of "Beautiful Nothing", outline the traits of a compact, intense record, varied in its execution, damnably alive and deep at the same time.

After a six-year hiatus comes the follow-up, Iperborea (2024), her first in Italian and a sci-fi concept album about present-day times. The many studio tricks and lavish production try to mask the lack of appeal in coldly cerebral songs ("Trionfo e rovina", "L'idea del tutto", "Generazione cosmico", and the eponymous "Iperborea" with traces of trap flow).

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