PORT-ROYAL - Flares

It doesn't happen very often that an independent Italian production reaches a level of quality that places it alongside established international artists on equal footing, and not merely out of a certain patriotic sympathy. Unfortunately, it happens even more rarely that such an occurrence finds fertile ground in the Italian independent scene, too busy building false alternatives, yet capable of letting a surprising work like this debut from Genoa's Port-Royal pass almost unnoticed — tellingly released by the small but extremely active British label Resonant, always very attentive in seeking out new and interesting sensations, especially when it comes, as in this case, to instrumental, dreamlike music straddling classicism, rock experimentation and electronics.

Although "Flares" moves along artistic paths already traced and explored above all by Nordic and Central European bands, it would be a mistake to consider it merely the fruit of a well-executed mannerist emulation, since from the outset it appears to be the result of the intersection of quite different influences and musical experiences, filtered through the band's own particular sensibility over more than two years of work. The ten instrumental tracks packed into the album's nearly eighty minutes range widely, in a single continuous flow of thought, between echoes of contemporary classical music, dilated dreamlike atmospheres, traces of minimal electronica and passages dominated by more pronounced beats.

The sense of the richness and variety of this work's content is already apparent from the opening "Jeka", which begins with three simple piano notes in the style of Sylvain Chauveau over a rarefied, enveloping synthetic texture that soon takes over, establishing a suspended ambient calm in the manner of Labradford or Stars Of The Lid, barely pierced by a faint spoken voice in the distance.

Equally spectral is the opening of the following "Spetsnaz/Paul Leni", shaken by a frenetic electronic percussion that, after first dissolving into a thick blanket of drones, picks back up on an almost danceable rhythm, before scattering again, overwhelmed by impalpable ambient sounds and an unexpected guitar chord, a prelude to a hypnotic finale, pervaded by repeating interstellar signals floating over a cosmic distortion. Far more turbulent is the journey of the over 12 minutes of "Karola Bloch", a track built along lines similar to some of Mogwai's early productions — except that here the guitars are replaced by a feverish electronic rhythm — which not only marks the time but carries it through territories of subtle, glacial, deconstructed psychedelia.

If the structures of these tracks can already seem quite complex, the Genoese band fully expresses its far from trivial compositional vitality, even on a conceptual level, in the two pieces each split into three movements, "Zobione" and "Flares", the first of which displays an articulated, ever-shifting structure, while the title track follows a circular pattern with numerous variations on its theme.

"Zobione" unwinds from the sinister, dense psychedelic fog of its first part, which gradually thins out until it dissolves into the warm, enveloping liquid rhythm of the second, marked by sweeping lyrical openings among which one seems to glimpse Floydian atmospheres, revitalized by a delicate, shadowy vein not so far removed from that of Sigur Rós; the third part, finally, is decidedly devoted to an electronic sound, built on the alternation between a driving beat and minimal cinematic passages.

The enchanting "Flares", on the other hand, sketches dreamy, enveloping melodies that chase each other across its three parts: the first (without doubt the most fascinating piece on the whole record), studded with romantic piano and languid guitars wrapped in electronic crackle, halfway between the atmospheres of Pan American and the Sigur Rós of "( )"; the second, marked by sounds of warm emotional crescendo and rich in romantic suggestions, among which one can glimpse a slight post-Canterbury psychedelia filtered through the experiences of bands such as Slowdive and, again, Sigur Rós; the third, steeped in ambient electronica, ideally closing the circle by reinterpreting once more the composition's central theme, which briefly returns at the end in the original form of the first part.

Although it isn't easy to render the content of such a varied work, it should nonetheless be emphasized, favorably, how the band manages to present a work rich in excellent ideas, by no means a given in a musical landscape where it has become difficult — even for established acts — to maintain a sufficient degree of freshness and originality. Although the album is akin, in concept and sonic settings, to the fine works of The Album Leaf and labelmates Stafrænn Hákon and Blindfold, the sheer multiplicity of stylistic and compositional references found within it makes it hard to pin down to any specific "genre", combining as it does electronic beats and layered guitars, static ambient scenery and emotional passages, at times quiet, at times intense. It's precisely in these latter moments that one can best appreciate (as in the case of "Flares Pt. 1") the band's flair for glacial, introspective melodies — though it would be reductive and simplistic to label them as the Mediterranean incarnation of Sigur Rós, with whom Port-Royal nonetheless share the ability to conjure enveloping music with blurred, constantly shifting contours.

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30/04/2026