Ianva - Alla ricerca dell’ardore perduto

Ianva represent a happy anomaly on the Italian indie scene. By rejecting the sounds, styles and models of the national alternative scene, the Genoa-based ensemble favours instead the martial march of neofolk, while looking above all to “their own unshakeable musical Italianness”: from the first wave of Italian new wave to songwriters such as Ciampi and De André, from the masters of film scoring (Morricone first and foremost, but also Bruno Nicolai, Armando Trovajoli, Franco Micalizzi, Stelvio Cipriani, Guido and Maurizio De Angelis) to the totemic figures of Saturday nights gone by (Mina, Gabriella Ferri, Milva, Massimo Ranieri, Lucio Battisti).

To this already varied melange is added a love for great international crooners (Scott Walker, Marc Almond, Jacques Brel) and for the glittery nocturnal ballads of the most decadent strand of British glam. A sound and an imagery rooted in the past, yet projected into the future: “archeo-futurist”, by their own definition. But with no ideological implications whatsoever: Ianva describe themselves as an “apolitical” band and firmly reject the sterile controversies that periodically plague the neofolk scene.

The project was born in 2003 on the initiative of Mercy (Malombra, Il Segno del Comando, Helden Rune) and Argento (already a member of top-tier black metal act Spite Extreme Wing and the mastermind behind “brutal” outfit Antropofagus), and brings together many leading names of the Italian underground scene, from very different backgrounds, but “united by the need to restore meaning to concepts such as passion, boldness, dignity and, above all, driven by the desire to preserve those few but excellent qualities of the Italian sensibility from a time before the levelling process that has taken hold over the last two decades”.

Vocal duties are split between Mercy himself and Stefania D’Alterio, formerly of Wagooba, also known for her work as a journalist (“Psycho!”, “Ritual”, “Classix!”, among many others). Guitars are handled by Argento, while the rhythm section is equally split between former Malombra member Francesco La Rosa (drums and percussion) and Spite Extreme Wing's Azoth (bass); the band also draws on conservatory-trained musicians such as Fabio Gremo, Fabio Fabbri, Giuseppe Spanò and Riccardo Casazza, who take turns on guitars, trumpet, piano, accordion and strings.

Lending a hand to the band is guest of honour Andrea Chimenti, the unforgettable voice of Moda and currently one of the most refined performers/songwriters on the Italian scene.

The spark for the band's recording debut came from two tracks that Mercy and Argento wrote (the first under the name Heldenplatz, the second credited to S.E.W.) for an Italian underground compilation. The fil rouge running through both compositions is the saga of the Fiume Enterprise. From there came the urge to craft a work that owes much to the Italian tradition of 70s concept art-rock. The first result was an EP, La Ballata Dell'Ardito, featuring, alongside the title track, an outtake from the subsequent album (“Un Sogno D'Elettra”) introducing the female lead, Elettra Stavros, and a cover of Jacques Brel's “Amsterdam”.

Shortly afterwards came Disobbedisco!, the first full-length released under the Ianva name.

The storyline is drawn from an obscure memoir published by a retired officer (one Col. Giovanni Laurago, born 1898), titled “Mai Così Colmo Di Vita”, in which the elderly soldier recalls the days when he served as aide to one of the main figures responsible for internal security in the Italian Regency of Carnaro in the aftermath of D'Annunzio's Enterprise, Major Cesare Renzi, “a disillusioned idealist endowed with a recklessness born of a disenchantment with life”.

“Disobbedisco!” is therefore a kind of musical, a theatrical tribute to the enterprise of D'Annunzio and his legionaries: the short-lived Italian regency of Carnaro betrayed by the very nation those men had fought for, a bloody Christmas, and, against this grim backdrop, the burning love story between Major Renzi and Elettra Stavros, a seductive inter-Allied spy on a sabotage mission.

Amid wartime speeches, enveloping ballads and orchestral onslaughts, the saga unfolds over three years of battles (1918-1920), of heroes and of the defeated, amid the ruins of a shattered continent.

The opening track (“Intro – Colpo Di Maglio”) sets out with typical apocalyptic-folk textures, featuring General Caviglia's radio proclamation before the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, underpinned by a monotone hum, almost a single chord mimicking the classic crackle of vinyl, before the orchestra magnificently opens up, as if accompanying marching soldiers. A track that wouldn't be out of place on “Koda“, the masterpiece by In The Nursery. Next comes “La Ballata Dell'Ardito”, a bitter portrait of a “magnificent loser”, narrated by Renzi in the first person with the warm baritone tones of Mercy: Fabio Fabbri's epic trumpet and the nostalgic echo of an accordion crown a gem worthy of the most baroque De André, the one of “Tutti Morimmo A Stento“.

Then, another slice of historical footage: General Diaz announces that “the war is won.” But it's a “Mutilated Victory,” undermined by the Treaty of Paris, which assigns Fiume to Croatian jurisdiction, sparking the revolt of the betrayed legionnaires (“They cast us as discarded thugs” / Now shut up and get the hell out!… we will not lay down our arms”): another vibrant vocal performance from Mercy, set to a cadence of acoustic guitar and a dark, powerful bass. The warlike cry of the Vate heralds the return to battle (“XII-IX-MCMXIX: Back To Arms!”), because one cannot “hold one's nose at the stench of an insulting peace”: another martial ballad in the style of Death In June, driven by trumpet and percussion. What follows from here on is a slow descent into the whirlpool of passion and self-destruction.

The entrance of Elettra Stavros, “the infernal chanteuse,” at the Caffè dell'Hotel Europa is wrapped in decadent fumes straight out of Brechtian cabaret. A depraved Mata Hari, moved by the seductive voice of Stefania T. D'Alterio to the step of a funereal tango, steeped in opium and absinthe (“Tango della Menade”).

The drunken jig of “Sangue Morlacco” (the marasca wine renamed thus by D'Annunzio), with its Mediterranean dances, is the last flicker of life. “Per Non Dormire” is already self-pity and romantic regret (“I know she has been there, in places I never dared venture because I was afraid of being a King”): another splendid ballad opened by guitar and carried by keyboard, in a crescendo where all the other instruments gradually join in.

It's Andrea Chimenti who lends his intense voice to D'Annunzio in the leaden spoken-word of “Traditi,” the commander's farewell to his legionnaires. And what D'Alterio/Stavros declaims over the arcane calls of the trumpet in “Fuoco a Fiume” is a true requiem, leaving Mercy/Renzi the words of farewell: the two lovers will never manage to reunite in Trieste. “Muri d'Assenzio” is the final flash: the dream fades into lead, “a volley of brotherly fire” strikes Renzi down, and the tolling of Franz Ekurn's piano seals its de profundis. The closing instrumental “Outro – Amor Sola Lex” is merely the prelude to the disorienting ghost track: a Stavros now pumped full of morphine and reduced to a dive-bar singer in the port of Hamburg performs “O' Surdato 'Nnammurato” (a tribute to Anna Magnani's famous version in the film “La Sciantosa”). The “infernal chanteuse” will die of a morphine overdose a few hours later, in a squalid, bottom-tier hotel room.

A work meticulously crafted down to the smallest detail, from the arrangements to the lyrics (in the lofty, and beautiful, Italian of the era) to the packaging and the retro artwork, Disobbedisco! is one of the most striking responses Italian music has given to those who have long predicted its demise, or its supposedly complete derailment from its roots. A modern record, yet firmly rooted in our tradition, and one that, perhaps precisely for this reason, sounds as exportable as very few others.

Disobbedisco! becomes something of a small sensation in the Italian underground. Ianva win over devotees of European neofolk – headlining the first of two nights at the important Triumvirat Festival in Switzerland – but also win over fans of classic Italian singer-songwriter music from its golden age. The album also receives an excellent reception from the specialist press, both in Italy and abroad. It will even be the only Italian title to place among the top 50 albums of 2006 in the global portal Rate Your Music's annual chart.

In 2007 Ianva shut themselves away in the studio to record a new EP, again for the label Il Levriero, which, besides Mercy himself, involves Massimo Bellucci, formerly of Consorzio Produttori Indipendenti.

The result is L'Occidente, four new tracks that mark a further departure from their early neofolk sound, in favor of a more pronounced singer-songwriter imprint, in which the band's typical noir attitude is, at times, lit up by Mediterranean sunshine and the folk traditions of Southern Italy.

The mournful tread of trumpet and accordion punctuates the title track's indictment of the decay of a Western culture in which “all that remains sacred” is “one's own backside.” Words of lead, once again, but set to light notes that waver between the romanticism of a Scott Walker and the hazy atmospheres of Italian genre film scores of the 1960s and '70s. “Santa Luce Dei Macelli,” meanwhile, gives Stefania D'Alterio the chance for another cabaret turn, at once funereal and passionate (bringing to mind the sensual “Tango Della Menade” from “Disobbedisco!”), set to the slow rhythm of ancient devotional rites from the deep South. But it's also another occasion for “cultural resistance” against the discount Enlightenment that today would like to sweep away every trace of that ancient spirit, also evoked in the instrumental “Il sereno e la tempesta,” where Celtic sonorities blend with the warmth of Mediterranean timbres, along the routes of a gentle melody.

It's the calm before the storm of “In Battaglia,” an epic version of “In Battle” by the Strawbs, rewritten by Ianva as a prologue to “Disobbedisco!,” capturing the moment Major Renzi bursts into the life of Giovanni Laurago, amid the most convulsive phases of the bloody Battle of Monte S. Gabriele in 1917. Here too, however, little remains of the martial neofolk tread, despite the dramatic crescendo built into the track, and what stands out above all is Mercy's deep baritone.

Appropriately over-arranged (in defiance of the tedious minimalist and lo-fi dictates that still dominate the Italian indie scene), dense with atmosphere and color, the four tracks on this EP confirm the class of a band that is a happily anomalous presence on the Italian scene.

With their second full-length release, Italy: ultimo atto (2009), Ianva widen their lens enormously: a kolossal that comes close to 70 minutes and drags the listener through a dramatic journey across Italian history from 1943 to the present day. It's the kind of project that risks sinking into pretension or, worse, into soapbox rhetoric. Instead, everything flows smoothly with solid narrative coherence, thanks in no small part to the undeniable storytelling gifts of the Ligurian ensemble.

The firm, uncompromising gaze of Mercy & co. is still tinged with nostalgia for that sort of early-century “Italian arcadia,” progressively corrupted. And in its own “years of lead” there shine references to some of the great voices of dissent, from Pasolini to Malaparte, from Germi to Gaber. Certainly, the Ianva's conceptual arsenal is not without grey areas, forced moves, and controversial, questionable ideological leanings. But what remains is the pride of a passionate, blazing narrative.

A dark, severe prophecy from Pier Paolo Pasolini, entrusted to the voice of Enrico Silvestrin (over a martial bed of horns and drums), serves as the incipit to twelve stations of Italy's Calvary, marked out by the band's characteristic sounds: accordions, trumpets, violins. Sounds increasingly rooted in Italian folk music, amid epic Morricone-esque touches and clear tributes to the Genoese singer-songwriter tradition (De André above all), yet always attuned to the melodramatic spell of international crooners like Scott Walker and Marc Almond. And the evolution toward a more airy, almost “operatic” format is accentuated, a ballad for orchestra that almost entirely abandons the martial neofolk tread.

And so unfolds the chaos following September 8, 1943 (“Where were you that day?”), heralded by grim trumpet blasts; the bombing of Genoa that devastates the old “Galleria Delle Grazie” (with a cameo from Franca Lai, a monument of Genoese popular song); the abyss of civil war (the enveloping crescendo of guitar and trumpet in “Negli occhi di un ribelle” and the solemn flashbacks of “La stagione di Caino”); the toppling of the old symbols, with the execution of the actress “Luisa Ferida” (a classic noir cabaret number from Stefania D'Alterio, underpinned by symphonic arrangements); the tragedy of the foibe massacres (the gloomy dance of “Bora”).

So, as the mirage of the boom fades, new specters emerge: the Montesi case, the first in an endless series of cover-up scandals ("In compagnia dei lupi", with D'Alterio still center stage over mocking cadences that echo De André's "Un giudice"), the concrete-paving of the country and the first bomb (the driving instrumental "Cemento armato", almost a theme out of 70s poliziottesco cinema), the Years of Lead seen through the eyes of a "Pasionaria" (another fine soundtrack-like theme, complete with western guitars and a Morricone-esque, aching whistle), and the murder of Pasolini ("Piazza dei Cinquecento", with Duke Montana briefly stepping into the role of the "Ragazzo di Vita"). Then there's "L'estate dei silenzi", the summer of 1980, of the Ustica and Bologna massacres (another spoken part from Mercy over arpeggiated guitar), and finally "L'ultimo atto", the normalization of the 80s and 90s, in an invective — this time more predictable — against the moral disintegration of the country, leading straight to the political miseries of our own day.

What stands out is a cinematic eye for detail (the alarm siren that tears through the crackling vinyl of "Galleria delle Grazie", the live-sounding dialogue of "In compagnia dei lupi", the overlapping historic speeches in "La stagione di Caino"), paired with an expressive urgency that, paradoxically, finds its most authentic reason for being precisely in its own pomposity.

The appeal of Ianva lies precisely in that dark, solemn emphasis, in that overflowing lyrical power which miraculously escapes the unintentional irony that plagues so many kindred bands.

If Disobbedisco! was a sledgehammer blow to the face of Italian indie, Italy: ultimo atto is a slow but inexorable descent into hell, confirming the Genoese band's uniqueness on the domestic scene.

Confirming the singularity of the Ianva phenomenon comes the third chapter in this long-haul saga, The Hand of Glory (2012), a visionary concept album set in a "nightmare" scenario in which "Italy and Europe are under the heel of an enlightened oligarchy". Some might observe that we're already living it. But the Genoese band adds their usual ingredients of desperate titanism, recounting the deeds of "a handful of daredevils, wildly different in origin and ideology but united by an inexorable fate, who will dare to challenge the power of the system by deliberately choosing the weapon of aesthetic subversion".

"The Hand of Glory" has a narrative substrate more layered and rich in symbolism than ever before, one that Mercy will go on to develop in the forthcoming novel of the same name. Perhaps it's even too complex for an impatient listener unwilling to dig into the folds of its various song-stories, each of which is explained in detail within the hefty booklet (here the online version), with striking artwork by Dinamo Innesco Rivoluzione. The concept's protagonist is a new D'Annunzio-style hero named Pietro Jorio, whose rigorous ethics marry a revolutionary yearning that, as with the early-20th-century avant-gardes, springs first and foremost from an aesthetic impulse. Around him forms a band of new, unyielding "deserters": madmen, heretics, anarchists, visionaries, dreamers, united in an unusual movement of political-artistic subversion destined inevitably for defeat.

Musically, the foray into fantasy territory revives the martial-folk component that was partly sacrificed on the previous record, and heightens the epic quality of their melodramas, firmly rooted in Italian tradition, tinging them with dark, psychedelic undertones. Their by-now consolidated knack for soundtrack music, meanwhile, acts as the glue holding together the album's 73 minutes. The structure is the classic one: a spoken-word prologue ("Tempus Destruendi") and the emphatic blast of trumpets backing Mercy's vibrant vocals in a new, convincing Ardito-style ballad ("Il bello della sfida"). But Ianva aren't afraid to shape reckless hybrids like "Edelweiss" — the portrait of a Tyrolean heroine-artist who rebels against the removal of a crucifix — in which Morricone-esque western cadences marry a sepulchral (German-language) chorus that echoes Joy Division's "Heart And Soul". And when the D'Alterio chanteuse takes the stage, an old-fashioned noir-cabaret reopens its doors, where the dust of memory accompanies blasphemous prayers ("Sul mio sangue") and lovers' torments play out amid ancestral summer-solstice rites ("Le stelle e i falò"). The spoken-word device also returns, put to particularly good use on the manifesto-like title track, where GAb Svenym Volgar of Xacrestani (Deviate Damaen) lends his voice to Pietro Jorio for a roll call of the atrocities of the Combinat, the monstrous oligarchic-business-criminal aggregate ("the head of a serpent whose coils are strangling the world").

What feel less sharply focused compared to earlier work are above all the songs and melodies, somewhat sacrificed in the name of the sound's opulence and the narrative project as a whole.

Despite being saddled with a questionable ideological apparatus, fueled here by fresh, delirious invectives against the usual enemies (progressivism, scientism, relativism, feminism, etc.), the Ianva project confirms itself as a fascinating heresy within an increasingly flat and homogenized landscape like that of Italian indie.

On Canone Europeo, Ianva continue their march through a martial folk sound capable of ranging across various themes while always keeping the Genoese band's unique style intact. It opens with "Hellas", a fitting tribute to the indomitable spirit of ancient Greece, cradle of European civilization, before moving on to "Come Ferro Battente", a fierce invective against our present and its language thick with hypocrisy. With a leap through history, we arrive at "Resurgente", a track that evokes the Five Days of Milan and the spirit of the Italian Risorgimento.

The eponymous track is a kind of excursus in search of a different Europe, one made of history, culture and tradition rather than mere economic exchange and mindless mass tourism. "Canone Europeo" features Enrico Ruggeri on vocals, for a sincere anthem to a lost beauty to be sought out in old cafés or among the treasures of European art and music.

Still on the theme of the relationship between art and patriotism, the album offers several dark gems: the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa by the Italian Vincenzo Peruggia, recounted in "Le Rital", and "Benvenuto", a song dedicated to the famous Mannerist sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. The latter is, on a purely musical level, an episode with a distinctly Morricone-esque flavor. As can be gleaned from Ianva's lyrics, in the indissoluble intertwining of art and life in the Florentine artist's story, a thoroughly Italian human archetype emerges.

"L'alba delle Ceneri", magnificently sung by D'Alterio, is a song of decadent beauty about artists throughout history who died by suicide (from La Rochelle to Yukio Mishima, by way of Celan and Klaus Mann). The lyrics also contain a reference to "Tutto il ferro della Torre Eiffel", a book by Italian writer Michele Mari published in 2002.

Naturally, Ianva's more combative side, where art and action fuse together, is not missing either. "Rombo di Giovane Ala" recalls Gabriele D'Annunzio's flight over Vienna, while "Cummandar As Shaitan" tells of the exploits of Amedeo Guillet, the "Devil Commander", heroic protagonist of the Italian guerrilla campaign in Ethiopia.

Musically, the album shows greater compactness and cohesion compared to La Mano di Gloria. A stronger martial attitude also emerges, especially on "Come Ferro Battente" and the title track, two of Ianva's most direct and successful songs. Overall, the album moves closer to Mitteleuropean and motorik suggestions, even brushing up against the shores of new wave and industrial sounds.

Canone Europeo arrives at a moment of profound ethical, moral and cultural crisis for the European continent. In its many historical and cultural references, as in the intro "Parodos" and the outro "Patmos", it reveals a pessimistic outlook, but also a will not to surrender, a trait typical of the figure of the rebel outlined by the German writer Ernst Jünger, a figure also evoked in the lyrics of "Come Ferro Battente". Even amid despair and decadence, Europe's past glories still burn like a bonfire in the darkest night.

The centenary of the daring venture at Fiume carried out by the poet-warrior Gabriele D’Annunzio and his legionaries could hardly go unnoticed by Ianva. Back in 2006 they had dedicated their debut album precisely to that historical event, and now they return to the theme with an excellent collector's 7" vinyl released by Antica Fonografia Il Levriero. 1919 consists of two tracks: the first, the title track, features a duet between Mercy and Stefania T. D’Altero, while the second, titled "Disobbedisco!", stages a spoken-word performance by actor Edoardo Sylos Labini, who here gives voice to the Vate in what amounts to a genuine incendiary pamphlet, set to the martial rhythms of Ianva.

The fascination of a story like that of D’Annunzio and his young legionaries goes beyond the facts and the historical circumstances, taking on the symbolic form of a people's collective redemption through the heroic action of a handful of arditi. A century has passed, but this act of revolt against the injustices of the present couldn't feel more relevant. That's why the slogan "Restiamo fiumani" accompanying the record's release still shines with hope beneath the stars of the Great Bear. Yet another great showing from a happy anomaly on the Italian music scene.

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