PULSE - Pulse

Pulse's debut is an intensely creative work, released on Pippola

Music, a new indie label born from an idea by former Pankow member Paolo Favati. The deus ex

machina behind it is Marco Galardi, who pours fifteen years of experience into the project

as a drummer, with notable collaborations including Jazz Zero Grup, Govinda, Indo

European Music Ensamble, and Arup Kanti Dhas, among others.

Pulse boasts a wide range

of sources of inspiration, unusual contaminations and experimental pollutions that

make it hard to pigeonhole. Still, amid the various

shades one can pick up on a certain dark/obsessive attitude rooted in electronic music, in the

Antler school, but also sturdy jazzy digressions from a Miles Davis viewed through the

lens of Tuxedomoon.

La

The backbone of the compositions is built around solid patterns

percussive elements, ensuring harmonic tightness, functional in conveying

a strongly maximalist sound identity. The drums pound, stumble,

pulling off funky stop-and-go moves, always at the forefront in dictating the guiding

lines of the track. It ranges from the cybernetic blues of "Uncles", which boasts an

ambient-techno-transglobal intro in the vein of Banco de Gaia, to the psychedelia of

"Aracnos", a Floyd-like reminiscence set within a

pulsing dub structure.

But the music is so densely cryptic that it doesn't

allow for the gamble of an iconic-visual characterization; it rests

on the aggregation of seemingly distant elements, on cyberpunk architectures

and guitar barks, hints of trip-hop that clatter into sudden

rhythmic hammering.

One gets the impression that Pulse relies

on the individual musicians' flair more than on a precise programmatic/conceptual

manifesto, which nonetheless doesn't undermine the overall success

of the album, as also proven by the equally excellent “Light,” funk-style circa 3020, and

the Davis-esque ambient vertigo of “Sal’AAM aleicum,” finding an ideal meeting point

between materiality and transcendence. The disorienting “Il genio della lampada”

tangles itself in a menacing drone crescendo, only slightly softened by the

sound of the sarangi, an Orientalist glow amid post-industrial constructions.

Yet within Pulse's icy angular geometries, one sometimes seems to

sense a kind of pre-modern saudade, a faint lament that is more a longing for

an original innocence than a push toward some futuristic (albeit already

achieved) digital aesthetic.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

30/04/2026