Subsonica - A volcano in the shadow of the Mole

Subsonica, a genuine product of Turin's alternative scene and for years the flagship act of indie label Mescal, quickly became one of Italy's most beloved and cross-genre bands, standing at the crossroads between underground and mainstream. To a hip-hop foundation they add a tendency to blend in rock and an electro-dance sound steeped in influences, including that of British trip-hop in the Massive Attack mould.

The Turin band formed in '96 in the shadow of the Murazzi del Po, a turbulent but musically dense neighbourhood teeming with nightclubs and social centres. A good share of post-posse Italian music passed through these banks. And here, every night, the clubs' speakers rang out with ethnic music: from reggae to crossover, from raggamuffin to hip-hop.

Infected by the new electronic music and the dub experiments they heard in the social centres in the shadow of the Mole, the band decided to blend them with more conventionally pop formulas. From the Murazzi, then, came Subsonica's great leap toward audiences across Italy, helped in no small part by the creative input of Casacci, who besides being the band's guitarist is also one of Italy's most in-demand producers.

Their early background ranged from listening to Pink Floyd's psychedelic music to a passion for Chemical Brothers' electronics, with a shared obsession for science fiction. "On the road, on the bus, we also take the chance to read, especially Gibson and Sterling," Max Casacci, Subsonica's guitarist and ideologue, already a veteran of Africa Unite, said back in their early days. "But we also watch a lot of films. We're influenced by the whole sci-fi imagery, from 'Blade Runner' to 'Matrix' to 'Ghost in the Shell', whose soundtrack is the opening theme of our live show. Another thing we really love is B-movie Italian sci-fi, like 'A come Andromeda' by Lucio Fulci."

All these elements converge in the blistering self-titled debut of 1997, one of the finest examples of cross-pollination between Italian and international underground sensibilities. An album born between the Murazzi del Po and Casasonica (their operational base nearby in Piazza Vittorio Veneto), but one that also speaks well for other corners of the Italian underground, such as Casino Royale, perhaps the clearest guiding star for Subsonica in terms of blending soul, dub and trip-hop paths. Unlike Alioscia Bisceglia & co., however, the Turin outfit displayed a personality capable of breaking through more easily into the mainstream. Subsonica is the perfect record to capture the thrill of electronic fever alongside a combative urgency, absorbing club culture ("Giungla Nord", "Velociraptor"), obsessive jagged edges ("Momenti Di Noia"), electro-flavoured dub ("Preso Blu"), Seventies black-music undertones ("Funk Star") and danceable pop immediacy ("Onde Quadre", "Radioestensioni", "Cose Che Non Ho").

But from the very start Subsonica sought out a social and political dimension, even taking part in debates on new youth languages, as happened at the Rome headquarters of the Treccani encyclopedia. "We like to shine a light on certain aspects of our city, Turin, to bring out the ties linking music to its territory, to tell stories that blend fiction and reportage, while also imagining a fitting soundtrack for them." A goal that Samuel, the band's vocalist, Boosta on keyboards, Pierfunk on bass, Ninja on drums, and Max had already tried to achieve on Microchip emozionale. "The album highlights the band's two souls," Max explains further. "On one hand, living in Turin there's a mechanical, technological reality that strongly affects our music. Alongside that there's a humanising element, which is melody. In recent years, with the decline of the industrial utopia, the city has rediscovered life: for instance, many meeting places have opened up."

Their musical formula arises from a compromise between chart-friendly pop and experimentation, an unusual blend of pop, reggae, soul and dance. But Subsonica aren't afraid of criticism from the most uncompromising listeners: "We're not afraid to cross over to the other side of the barricade," they say, "and we think others should do the same, as long as they remember to always come back home."

Collaborations with other artists soon followed. In '97 Antonella Ruggiero asked them to record a new version of "Per un'ora d'amore" for the album "Registrazioni moderne", while Microchip emozionale features the claustrophobic track "Discolabirinto", written together with Morgan (Bluvertigo) in the early hours of dawn, after a wild night out in Turin. The video made for the song has a distinctive touch: looking to the muffled world of the deaf, the two bands assure us it can be listened to at "zero volume".

Sanremo could have turned into slippery ground for Subsonica. But the band looked back on the experience with satisfaction ("It let people who'd never come to our shows see us"). Their growing popularity was also boosted by the breakout success of their online presence. Their website was built by Ninja himself, who was finally able to put his computer engineering degree to use. "We placed a lot of emphasis on interactivity with the people visiting it," says its creator, "through things like the message board, chat, or email."

"A slightly livid Polaroid of these last few years, of what happened in 2001": that's how Subsonica describe Amorematico, their third album. The enigmatic title, coined by singer Samuel, is a blend of the Italian words for love, automatic and blood/haematic.

After the platinum-selling Microchip Emozionale and their appearance at the 2000 edition of the Sanremo Festival, having definitively crossed over from the underground scene to the mainstream, Subsonica feel the pressure. "A pressure," explains Samuel, the band's other mastermind, "that we felt at first, but that we freed ourselves from by diving into our own city in search of inspiration: because for us, Turin is a crucial outpost of feelings waiting to be told." The result is an album the band themselves describe as "introspective, crossed by a subtle unease, a livid vein seeking release": which duly arrives at the end of the CD, with the hypnotic deep house coda entirely entrusted to DJ Roger Rama.

Amorematico is first and foremost an album of songs, with plenty of room given to the rhythm section, the arrangements and the lyrics. "It's a thoroughly contemporary record," explains Max, "that tries to stitch together key moments in the history of Italian sound since the Seventies, when masters like Morricone set the standard with the sheer style of their sound." The album opens with "Nuvole rapide", already featured in the soundtrack of "Santa Maradona", the film by their director friend Marco Ponti. It's a soundtrack Subsonica also contributed to through their side project Motel Connection, a club-culture experiment devised by Samuel and former member Pier-funk. The single accompanying the album's release, meanwhile, is "Nuova ossessione", an ironic, infectious track driven by a disco beat made in collaboration with Krisma, the legendary Italian synth-pop duo. The lyrics, which start out recounting a romantic infatuation, lend themselves to a double reading, extending into a reflection on the manipulation of obsessions as a mechanism of mass control.

Subsonica's obsession with the present becomes explicit in tracks like "Sole silenzioso", dedicated to the days of the Genoa G8 protests, and "Gente tranquilla", centered on family massacres. Featured on the latter track is Moroccan rapper Rachid, who delivers verses in Arabic embodying "the silent beast, the scapegoat, the bogeyman, the nightmare."

Controllo del livello di rombo (2003) captures six years of the Turin band's history live on stage.

In 2005, Subsonica continued down the road of the crowd-stirring, somewhat politicized record with Terrestrial, a direction already glimpsed on the previous album ("Gente tranquilla", "Sole silenzioso"). Some things had changed: the Turin band, once one of the flagship acts of Mescal, Italy's most important independent label, had moved over to EMI.

The most striking novelty is the return of guitars and a more traditionally rock-oriented instrumentation, at the expense of the electronics that, while still present, are now decidedly reined in. The opening of "Corpo a corpo", with a highly aggressive rapped verse followed by an incisive, convincing bassline, seems to promise good things, but by the time we get to the bland "Vita d'altri" there's already a sense that the days of "Microchip Emozionale" are gone for good. A suspicion, in truth, already raised by the dreadful single "Abitudine", but one that turns into outright bewilderment with "Gasoline", the Turin band's first (and hopefully last) song in English. A nice-enough opening beat (nothing groundbreaking, mind you) gets buried under a drawn-out vocal that's meant to be catchy but ends up rather sad and pathetic.

The Subsonica of late-Nineties urban unease and city love affairs come forcefully back into view on "Incantevole" (the best track here) and the following "L'odore", the album's only aggressive number. After the trip-hop, motorway-cruising ride of "Alba a quattro corsie" and the excellent "Salto nel vuoto", the band stumbles again with "Giorni a perdere": riffs borrowed from the most jaded end of Sonic Youth and hard-rock progressions worn thin from overuse. A shame, too, about the closing acoustic lullaby "Dormi", which undoes what little good had come before (the electronic opening of "Amantide").

Too many ups and downs, too little conviction, and a risky drift toward Italian-style nu-metal undermine a record that is essentially short on ideas, with many tracks seemingly written only to whip up the crowd at live shows. Someone really ought to tell Subsonica that a song like "Tutti i miei sbagli" should only ever be written once.

Meanwhile, Max Casacci devoted himself to a series of parallel projects spanning music and politics: running the Casasonica record label, directing the major Traffic Free Festival in Turin, and the environmentalist, anti-mafia initiative Torino Sistema Solare.

Subsonica, however, didn't stop there. In 2007, L'Eclissi marked a return to the band's proudly electronic past, while sharpening its retro-futurist character: an icy, cyberpunk sound, yet inlaid with quotations and echoes of bygone eras.

Blocky, forceful beats once again take command, but it's the guitar that acts as the album's "grey eminence." Discreet, essential, it carves out deliberate clichés that are instantly refracted, replicated as modules within the rhythmic pattern. I wrote something similar recently about Why?: so much of today's art finds its essence in its relationship with the past. Here, that recovery of the past comes through revisiting the most stereotypical disco stylings ("Nei nostri luoghi"), Morricone-esque figures ("La Glaciazione"), funk-punk slashes ("Quattrodieci"), or brash ska syncopations ("Piombo").

Instant, hook-laden songs are in short supply, yet the very tracks that at first seem flat reveal another side: irrepressible techno-driven surges ("La glaciazione", "Il centro della fiamma"), surefire dancefloor-fillers with can't-miss choruses ("Veleno", "Quattrodieci", "Piombo"), off-beat trip-style slow numbers ("Alta voracità", "Alibi"). What's also striking is the meticulous care taken with the sound, rich in glitches, varied minimalism, dry pulses, and frenetic, flawless jolts of electronics.

What spoils the picture, in any case, are the lyrics: clumsy exercises in hermeticism that raise the suspicion that behind their pretension to depth lies nothing but bargain-bin sentimentality simmered in a hi-tech sauce.

Three years on from Eden, the band's sixth album, the time has finally come for them to return to Italian stages with a new record. The Turin outfit has gone from playing small clubs to filling arenas, and like any band that grows and becomes popular, over the years it has had to prove it can reinvent itself while also walking the tightrope between staying true to its identity and becoming merely a shadow of itself. In this past decade, Subsonica have been many things, and then some.

What's left of their second record? A lot, if you consider they still share that same common denominator, but if you closely compare the themes and the propulsive rhythms of Microchip and Amorematico with their later work, nothing is the same as before. Even though there's been no shortage of great tracks, their more recent albums have taken a decidedly poppier turn, and that urge to blend nature and technology, the living and the artificial, on every level — lexical, musical, syntactical — has gradually faded away.

A Ship in a Forest (2014) makes it clear right from the cover that something has changed compared to the past: for the first time, the title is made up of a whole sentence. At the same time, there's a return to the pairing of two completely different elements: the forest and human ingenuity, both seeking contact, a balance. A boat in a forest, in Turinese dialect, signals something out of context: nine stories, nine estranged characters "living along a line of instability."

Drawn once again to the dualism between artifice and nature, they welcome into the work Michelangelo Pistoletto's manifesto, whose voice wraps around Samuel's to describe the Terzo Paradiso, a project meant to lead "[...] artifice — that is, science, technology, art, culture and politics — to restore life to the Earth. Terzo Paradiso means the passage to a new level of planetary civilization, essential to ensure the survival of humankind."

It can be seen as a synthesis of their identity: the band's key concepts move over a constantly shifting, deconstructed base, recalling a less noisy version of the "Atmosferico I-IV" pieces found on Amorematico. Powerful basslines, clear and precise sounds, for a song that both educates and enchants.

If every track were on this level, we'd have no doubt in calling them still the finest representatives of Italian music. It's true, though, that while the album doesn't have too many missteps and contains a few fine titles, it doesn't fully convince. Every track sounds like Subsonica, but the ones that truly carry weight are only those that recall their early, groundbreaking work without being mere rehashes of it. The ones where they tell stories detached from themselves, as if you could sense them stepping into a role, a character, alive with feelings and emotions yet outside their own identity. Something that recalls Peter Gabriel and his masks. The music is always top-notch, but unfortunately it's the lyrics that fall flat, oversimplified words far removed from their earlier work. Even though "A Ship in a Forest" probably won't rank among the best Italian albums, it's encouraging: Subsonica may have aged, but they're not entirely spent. They just need to find the entrance to the Terzo Paradiso.

In 2020 came Mental Instrumental, an experimental project Subsonica had been sitting on for some time, dating back to recording sessions held at the "CasaSonica" studios in Piazza Vittorio right after Amorematico. The record is a stroll through the sidereal depths of space and infinity.

It begins with the rocket's launch phase, as "Decollo – Voce Off" opens the journey with a dreamy, floating electronic weave, where a robotic voice announces the imminent liftoff, before giving way to a vigorous grind-industrial surge that captures the explosiveness of the launch from the cosmodrome. The quiet ambient passage that paves the way for the frenzied blast of the finale is particularly striking.

Primordial, rarefied sounds, mixed with Samuel's estranging vocalizations, lead into "Cullati dalla tempesta," where a stretched-out guitar frames chilling synthesized sounds around an ancestral percussive rhythm. The apprehensive "Artide 3 A.M." is decidedly softer, with bass and guitar quietly and fluidly supporting electronic inserts drawing on kraut influences. The hypnotic, restless "A Nord di ogni lontananza" moves the galactic journey forward on thick bass tones that trace pure space-synth textures, landing on a flawless bass-guitar interplay. A classical guitar announces and steers "Detriti nello spazio," a track in pure vintage Air style, where the references to Brian Eno's famous soundtracks are plain to hear. Even more unreal and visionary is the journey of "A di Addio."

Echoes of Battiato's experimental period — the "Clic"/"Sulle Corde di Aries" era — resurface here, enriched by the disembodied voice of Madame Mystere, which seems to come from neighboring galaxies. The record returns to more obsessive, piercing sounds on "Tempesta solare," where the unsettled, disjointed collision of industrial sounds hypnotizes ambient sighs drowned in the cosmic core.

"Delitto sulla Luna" plays out like a vintage noir, with the crime scene set in the darkness of the far, sinister side of our mysterious satellite. A grim percussive incipit gives way to shifting electronics across stylistic chiaroscuros.

A bit too disjointed, on the other hand, is the sparse puzzle of "Strumentale," where some enjoyable ideas end up fitted together less cohesively.

The spatial journey closes with "Rientro in atmosfera," famously a moment of suspense, masterfully depicted through jagged synth textures, at times noisy, alternating in a dense, harmonic flow that brings the passengers back down to touch Earth's surface at the end of the demanding voyage.

Mental Instrumental is an album that's fragmentary at times but surprisingly appealing, released wisely at a historical moment when reflection and inner withdrawal reached their peak. It's a record that therefore feels very current, even though it was recorded at the start of the century.

Six years on from 8, their last proper studio album, whose fallout had nearly driven the band to breaking up, the fateful final blow finally arrives.

And where better to try to start over after a crisis than from one's origins?

Augmented Reality is the title of their new album, a project that picks up again from what had defined their debut, when each member's contribution was put entirely at the service of the band's collective good.

An LP born over the course of 2023, when, stubbornly, Samuel, Boosta, Max Casacci, Ninja and Vicio decided to spend a week together each month, starting in January, in Piozzo, a tiny village in the ever-extraordinary hills of the Cuneo area.

That total sharing, not only artistic, has allowed the eleven tracks on the record to finally breathe the air typical of Subsonica once again, setting sail from their primordial sound, even predating that of the much-lauded Microchip emozionale.

The content of Augmented Reality paints a rather critical picture of the present day, marked by constant paradoxes: from forced isolation to the urge to appear by any means to the widest possible audience, from the desire to recover the most joyful emotions and passions to the frenzy of reaching one's goal by waging unprecedented wars and battles.

This is the backdrop against which the Piedmontese quintet moves, where the minds of a group of fifty-somethings now seem focused more on reflecting on the world around them (call it age and accumulated experience) than on trying to translate their own personal impulses into music and lyrics, as used to happen when they were younger.

The musical profile starts from the classic Subsonica blend, where electronic-leaning pop-rock flows into the most varied territories, from funky to reggae, dance, dub, hip-hop and trip-hop.

So in tracks like “Mattino di luce” and “Pugno di sabbia” it really does feel, in the best possible way, like a return to the exuberant rides of their golden years, thanks to complex, incisive and engaging harmonic structures topped with those choruses that lodge in your head with no escape; two tracks that will certainly find room in the upcoming tour kicking off in spring, the live dimension having always been the strong suit of their catalogue.

Nothing new, one might say at this point, but trust us, these are already excellent foundations, and above all there are more enticing courses waiting to be served at the table.

In “Cani umani”, the jagged opening attitude is broken up here and there by ever-present electronics and decidedly tasty acoustic touches. Much the same happens in “Missili e droni”, where the rarefied textures created by acoustic guitar and piano weave between electronics that seem perched on a launch pad, ready to take off, yet wisely stay anchored in place, respectful of the front line ahead of them.

In the engaging blend of “Universo”, Subsonica's trademark sound finds refuge among the strings and orchestrations of the immense Davide Rossi: a highly effective and successful pairing.

The ballad slot is filled by the folk-tinged “Vitiligine”, and while “Grandine” offers one last synthetic rush, “Adagio” writes an unprecedented page, perhaps the most unexpected of those Subsonica chose for the occasion. The track is part of the original soundtrack — written and composed by the band — for Stefano Sollima's film of the same name, for which the group received the special Soundtrack Stars Award. The dark atmosphere seeping through the cracks is intriguing, unusual for their usual patterns, highly cinematic and certainly worth exploring further in the future.

Augmented Reality is a finally convincing record, after a few past missteps that had been coming dangerously close to becoming too frequent.

The involvement of Marta Salogni on mixing duties (with Casacci and the rest of the band producing the record) is another arrow pulled from the quiver — she being a world-leading pioneer in the deconstruction and reshaping of sound, with a track record that speaks louder than any words.

“Subsonica are needed” is a line Boosta dropped during a recent interview to present the new album. That concise statement can certainly be considered valid, provided the artistic result matches what has been achieved here.

If Augmented Reality had put Subsonica back on track, Terre Rare (2026) takes the next step, turning that newfound stability into a genuine creative gamble.

Thirty years after forming, the Turin band resists any temptation to celebrate and instead chooses to push forward, delivering a mature, cohesive record charged with real expressive urgency.

The trip to Essaouira and the encounter with Gnawa tradition genuinely seep into the body of the sound, with guembri, krakeb and North African flourishes blending naturally into the group's classic rock-electronic framework. The result is an album that's more porous, physical and mobile, in which Vicio's bass takes on particular prominence, well supported by Ninja's elastic drumming, Max's abrasive guitars and Boosta's synthetic architecture, while Samuel continues to be the band's emotional center, his presence undiminished.

Tracks like "Straniero" and "Ghibli" make the success of this cross-pollination explicit, "Rifugio" adds depth and shadow, while "Il tempo in me" proves that Subsonica haven't lost the ability to write great songs in their most characteristic style.

More than a perfect record, Terre Rare is a necessary one: it fuses exploration and recognizability with seemingly effortless ease, and gives us the picture of a band that isn't coasting on its past, but keeps looking for ways to carry it forward.

Contributions by Paolo Ciro (“Subsonica”), Dario Ingiusto (“Terrestrial”), Marco Sgignoli (“L’Eclissi”), Alessandro Fiorito (“A Ship in a Forest”), Cristiano Orlando (“Mental Instrumental”, “Augmented Reality”, “Rare Earths”)

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