Mariposa - Modular music for retro-futuristic ballrooms

Mariposa, meaning “butterfly” in Spanish, is the project of an “open” six-piece working between Bologna, Verona and Arezzo. An ambitious project, combining Italian singer-songwriter music, folk, rock and psychedelia, in a surreal setting steeped in theatrical colours. Enzo Cimino (drums and percussion), Alessandro Fiori (vocals and violin), Enrico Gabrielli (winds), Gianluca Giusti (piano and keyboards), Rocco Marchi (guitar, bass, moog) and Michele Orvieti (keyboards and piano) conjure up a sort of bizarre “grammelot” in which lyricism and humour, noise and estrangement all merge together. “Our aim,” Mariposa explain, “is to combine spaces and dimensions belonging to apparently distant worlds, such as chamber music and the electroacoustic language typical of rock.”

Their debut album Portobello Illusioni (a title chosen as homage to Rino Gaetano and his “Nuntereggae più”) sits on that path of theatrical-musical avant-garde already explored by leading names in Italian auteur rock, such as Avion Travel and Vinicio Capossela. Capossela is above all the most obvious reference point, with his thunderous circus spirit and surreal ballads. On top of that, Mariposa add a touch of noise and psychedelia, drawing on the most crooked scores of Tom Waits and the lysergic “trips” of Syd Barrett.

Violins, flutes, sax, guitars and piano chase one another, giving birth to acoustic atmospheres that alternate with sudden noise flare-ups, splashes of jazz, klezmer contaminations and musical nursery rhymes. It's a mix of superb arpeggios (“Nenia diffusa”) and tipsy little marches (the irresistible “Giostra d'urto”), languid melodies in the style of Tenco (“Asparagi”) and outlandish piano sonatas (“Enrico IV”), poignant ballads (“Vorrei andare da sola”, “La sala da ballo”) and grotesque nursery rhymes (“Tutto in 40 minuti”, “Poesia del lettone”). The lyrics are always witty and sharp, in the spirit of that disenchanted irony so dear to their “master” Rino Gaetano.

The record, however, has two fundamental flaws: excessive self-indulgence, which leads Mariposa, for instance, to record forty seconds of someone throwing up in the (questionable) belief that this might interest someone, and a basic long-windedness: sixteen tracks are too many for the band's current stock of ideas. Still, it's a bold debut for a band that already shows a vivid musical “madness”.

The following studio album, Domino Dorelli (2002), further heightens this taste for the surreal, giving rise to a genuine Zappa-inspired theatrical staging, elevated by Alessandro Fiori's nonsense lyrics. The sonic palette also widens, with the use of strings and winds and even a children's choir. It's a “domino”, a game of interlocking pieces, in which the listener too is called upon to actively take part. It isn't a concept album, though in some ways it can resemble one. The theme of the second track, “Pinoleum Christi”, becomes the guiding thread of the whole work: the end of the world and the Last Judgment. Obviously à la Mariposa, so with all the Fellini-esque, epic and dazed quality that can be brought to subjects elsewhere treated with far greater solemnity.

Between forays into psychedelic territory (“Vamps di rumore”), dazed marches (“La Trota Neon”), Capossela-like pantomimes (“Undici La”) and more classic ballads (“La linea e il Cynar”), Mariposa display a musical repertoire that is by now rich and multifaceted, still pervaded by that creative urgency which had inspired their debut. Not always, however, does such fervour translate into fully focused songs, and this ultimately remains the band's true Achilles' heel.

In the meantime, our heroes settle into a multi-ethnic seven-piece, with members from Veneto, Emilia, Tuscany and Sicily: Bologna is their meeting point, home to the headquarters of their label Trovarobato.

Pròffiti Now! (2005) is probably Mariposa's most cohesive and mature work. The new central theme is the exhumation of the documentary format, through snippets of interviews with figures from the Italian indie-rock scene and hefty doses of political and social satire. Musically, it ranges from free jazz to pop, passing through that singer-songwriter tradition which remains the backbone of their work. From the obsessive ravings of “Teen Vaginas Can Destroy Your Life” and “Rimpianti a gas” to the solemn “Tutta Roba Marca” (close to the most experimental Lucio Dalla), from the psychedelic languor of “Radio Marea” to the ruthless political theatre of “Forza Musica”, a ritual unfolds that is both mocking and bitter.

Take apart, reassemble, cut and stitch, shift around, combine: this is the “modular music” that Mariposa have set out to spread. And Pròffiti Now is perhaps its definitive essay.

After two years of recording silence, Mariposa return with Best Company, an anthology album containing all the covers recorded by the band over their nine years of activity. It runs the gamut from "Oily Way" by their beloved Gong to guiding lights Jannacci and Gaber, from the daring transfigurations of Stormy Six's "L'apprendista" to the explosive version of "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da" by the Beatles, right through to Afterhours's "Male di Miele", entrusted to the voice of an 8-year-old girl.

A long-standing relationship, that between Mariposa and covers, also documented on their 2004 record Nuotando in un pesce bowl, on which they had fun reworking old Neapolitan folk melodies in instrumental and electronic form. In the Mariposa blender, the originals come out distorted, bringing dormant meanings and barely hinted-at suggestions to the surface. Ultimately, that should be the whole point of a covers album.

Their first album of original material in four years (so excluding the covers collection Best Company, Alessandro Fiori's side-project with Love, and the full live recording of the dada vaudeville piece "Quanti sedani lasciati ai cani"), i.e. since Pròffiti Now! — a double CD that to this day is perhaps their masterpiece — the self-titled Mariposa signals a notable stylistic shift.

Giving up (wholly or in part) their noxious non-sense, the successful tracks here prefer to go for contagious post-punk drive ("Specchio"), eccentric bubblegum drowned in sardonic fanfares ("Zia Vienna"), or a kind of waltz-music-box crossed with farfisa-driven liscio ("Notel Hotel"). Here and there you catch glimpses of a dazed Mark Everett, as in "Piero", or a funky-soul Beck in "Clinique Veterinaire". But too many tracks are toothless, if not outright poor: the little tune "Zucca", the by-now-typical jam "81 guerra atomica, 84 confronto: rivoluzione" (a lesser version here), and some mild orchestral excesses ("Sudoku" and "Vattene pur via", bordering on sentimental ballad territory). Lending more credibility to this "stripped-down" version of Mariposa are "Poco più in là", with its well-built lounge arrangement, and the inconclusive, drug-addled parody of Aerosmith and AC/DC that is "Can I Have Bon Bon?".

Not exactly a major work, and a bit bland at that, as if it were a side project of their own side project (Love). "Specchio" is the band's raison d'être in 2009, far more so than Daevid Allen's cameo on "Clinique Veterinaire".

Enrico Gabrielli reaches the state of the art here, by now the band's full-fledged artistic director (following his honourable appearance on the Ariston stage in February 2009, backing Afterhours), a multi-instrumentalist and unquestioned intelligentsia of the (already) Italian musical underground.

2010 also brings the solo debut of Alessandro Fiori, frontman, singer and lyricist of Mariposa and Love, a man with numerous collaborations to his name (including the monumental one with Lorenzo Bruschi on "Zarathustra", for Timet), as well as a painter, storyteller and inventor of his own literary dadaism. Watch Out for Myself is a stripping-bare for its author; far from the experimental drives of Mariposa and the rhythmic trips of Love, Fiori is able to let his ego soar through full-bodied existentialist vignettes.

The first part is one of his most effective impersonations of a Wyatt-esque jester, the densest in musical epitaphs and literary icons, particularly on the classically-styled "Catino blu".

In the second part he indulges lavishly in more elementary vaudeville, with a new high point, "2 Cowboy per un parcheggio". The final part is the most psychedelic, but above all the most homespun, with the rarefied tango-style of "Labbra fredde", admirably held up by the supporting musicians and melancholy violin flourishes.

A pleasantly comfortable record, it isn't flawless in matching its wide range of styles to an equally wide range of moods; within the unevenness of the chamber ensemble backing him, it almost plays like an album within the album: Fiori on piano and violin, "Asso" Stefana on guitar and bass, Marco Parente on drums alongside Zeno De Rossi, Enrico Gabrielli on winds and vibraphone, Danilo Gallo on double bass.

Semmai Semiplay, 2011, reaffirms the band's presence on the Italian scene and still includes "Pterodattili" and at least the faded reading-mantra of "Eccetera eccetera", but it's a somewhat watered-down simplification of their gospel, one that tries above all to meet the needs of their now-sizeable audience.

Already at odds with the band, Fiori leaves Mariposa in 2012. He's replaced by Serena Altavilla, formerly of Baby Blue, and the group in this new configuration records a mini-album, Semmai Semiplaya (2012), featuring acoustic lounge versions of songs from the previous record.

The former frontman devotes himself full-time to his solo project. His second record, This Sweet Museum (2012), is another venue for his dazed poetry, an autumnal record that gets bogged down in the verbosity of its lyrics and in distinctly uneven quality (aside from the meticulous arrangements built on electronic keyboards, especially on "Scusami", and an almost spiritual number like "Sandro Neri").

His third album, Cascata, is instead more urgent and musical, conceived and recorded in one go, with no grand pairing of music and words, but one that knows how to balance vocals and arrangement and almost marks the true beginning of his solo career: mechanically listless numbers like "Volevo Solo Farle un Caffè" and "Senza Sporcare", along with a whole series of ballads touched by originality, illuminate his art. There's even room for a return to his proverbial dadaism ("Il Suono del Cratere Centrale") and a piece of pure keyboard illusionism ("Un Occhio Chiuso").

In 2014 Alessandro Fiori teams up with Marco Parente under the name BettiBarsantini, whose first album, BettiBarsantini (Malintenti), sounds like a collection of ballads marked by hints of a midlife crisis.

Plancton (2016), his fourth solo album, gathers and condenses the scattershot experiments of his earlier records, unleashing a new ambition. This time the outlook is universal and contemplative, and the arrangements even flirt with electroacoustic ambitions: the record is almost a collaboration between Fiori and two electronic artists, Frnkbrt and Tasto Esc, who arm the leader's harmonium. It all starts with "Margine", a sincerely cubist lament. Then there's "Ho paura", truly sacral. Others sound more like stylistic disguises ("Ivo e Maria", "Galluzzo", the psalm "Madonna con bambino rubato"), alongside instrumentals that act as a corollary to them. The dialogue between the two components isn't fully clarified, but what remains is a work steeped in death and decay, a contrast to his usual tone of pataphysical tomfoolery.

The lineup of Mariposa with Altavilla on vocals from Semmai Semiplaya also records the comeback album after almost a decade of silence, Liscio Gelli (2020). Fiori's absence is (partly) made up for by Daniele Calandra; the two OoopopoiooO also step in. A nostalgic tribute to popular dance genres seems to be the album's only real throughline: the tango of “Licio” (with a nicely languid refrain surrounded by the glassy timbres of electronic keyboards), “Golpe Galop”, “Nando”, “Parapagal Polka”. Even what could be one of their typical feats of minimalist quotation, the Glass-like solfeggio of “Misericordia”, quickly turns into a zumpapà: the magical illusionism between minimalism and folk of Tiersen is another story entirely. The album has no real unifying tone, and often sounds distracted. In the little carousel of distorted voices of “Let’s Go Party”, on paper an excellent experiment in their typical vein (albeit quite déjà vu), it lacks Fiori's charisma. The dense, muted beat with Mexican fanfares and racing brass and string figures of “Pura Vida Dittatura”, truly the one authentic step forward in the band's aesthetic of recent years, becomes a practical metaphor for the whole album: good intentions and too much confusion, too much genericness. Mariposa shoot themselves in the foot by adding three more chapters to the “Niente” saga, whose first six installments appeared on Domino Dorelli and were in fact its weakest part (pure filler interludes lasting a few dozen seconds each), thereby comparing themselves to their own past. So one can't even pretend this is a fresh-start album, since they bring down upon themselves, like a tombstone, their own past glory days. Their extra-musical aesthetic, their (Gadda-like) practice of channeling political commentary through goliardic irony, their Babel-like nonchalance, their amused showmanship, after so many years (and after a few records in which it seemed to have been lost) returns miraculously intact. It's embodied in full only by “Aurelio”, a hushed, frame-worthy refrain, in a style somewhere between Penguin Cafe-style post-classicism and the retro feel of an Italian comedy film soundtrack.

Interzona (2021) documents a live concert from the Pròffiti Now tour.

Having closed the not-always-successful period of electronic experimentation, Alessandro Fiori returns more faithfully to his Mariposa and Love universes with the romantic concept album Mi Sono Perso nel bosco (2022). He comes across as a Tiromancino in Franciscan guise in the piano work turned cosmic samba of "I Got Lost in the Woods", one of his high points, whereas his more typically tender poetry of childlike free association in "Amami meglio" is almost smothered under tons of arrangement. He hits a stylistic low point with "Buonanotte amore", restless, syncopated and bluesy, in the mazurka form of "Stella cadente", and partly in "Fermo accanto a te", a duet veering toward dazed operetta. The second half settles into a wilted domestic intimism (the chamber-music romance of "Una sera", the airy little waltz of "Per il tuo compleanno" and the "cinematic" one of "Estate"), but it also reveals the best contributions from the (numerous) guest spots, with Iosonouncane's apocalyptic synthesizer tormenting the little folk ballad of "Troppo silenzio". A few too many anonymous concessions to lightweight singer-songwriter fare.

Contributions by Michele Saran (“Mariposa”, “Watch Out for Myself”, “Semmai Semiplay”, “This Sweet Museum”, “Cascata”, “Plancton”, “Liscio Gelli”, “I Got Lost in the Woods”)

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