THREE IN ONE GENTLEMAN SUIT - Some New Strategies

If mathematics isn't a matter of opinion, then rock music that chooses to dress itself in it should resemble an exact science, where emotion and the whims of chance count for little or nothing. And yet, still driven by a wild need to dissect states of mind — of whatever hue — so-called youth music almost always ends up — unless inspiration goes to hell entirely — cloaking even the most absolute truths in a mysterious veil of ineffability.

All this, we should add, comes on the back of genuine strategies, attack plans, and intriguing modes of use.

And the strategies of a band like Three In One Gentleman Suit (a trio from the provinces of Ferrara and Modena) are certainly that. Intriguing, I mean; even when they can't quite shake off the weight of influences more or less visible, more or less absorbed.

Working on nuances and always alluring harmonic blends, freshly run through a frenetic geometrization of the fundamental lesson handed down by Bitch Magnet ("Modern Age Apologies"), the trio immediately make their own that math-rock whose banners were being waved above.

"Maths Rule The Squadrons", in fact, cuts a fine figure as a somewhat less terrifying version of Don Caballero, embellished by the sly, wailing cry of a trombone. What strikes you is the icy emphasis, the algebraic precision of the arrangements and, above all, a truly remarkable guitar work (Giorgio Borgatti), in constant harmonic fragmentation, caught between psychedelic drool and neurotic broodings.

The communicative power of this music is never in doubt. The rhythm section itself (Federico Alberghino on drums and Paolo Polacchini on bass) structures the tempo with relentless, frenetic emotional drive.

This is, then, a complexity incapable of turning into an impenetrable fog, sustained as it is by inspiration of a very high order, and able to replay the eccentric card in the post-rock delirium of "A Sort Of Withdrawal", sliding down into the backdrop of a hushed melancholy.

A rock that, behind the self-imposed mask of cerebral rigor, finds cultured outbursts that, yes indeed, dramatize its own ABCs between minimalism and nods to Mission Of Burma ("Hi-Fi Burnout"), grandeur and decomposition, between catalepsy and hailstorm ferocity ("The Way You Walk"), noise-making and free-form, in that hypothesis of cubist samba that is "Underwater, My Samba".

Elsewhere, in the structured dance of "Approach/Arrival", in the sobbing overlaps of psychedelia and post-hardcore of "Get Off My Plane", or in the ballad led by hand through an evanescent piano on "Delikatessen", Three In One Gentleman Suit do nothing less than rummage through a thousand other possible strategies, or sketches thereof.

At the peak of their quest — still a work in progress, with probable, interesting outcomes to come — stands "New Strategies", a provisional synthesis of their creed: harmonic kaleidoscopes, stop & go dynamics, impetuous flare-ups and swirling repetitions yearning for a "mathematical" ecstasy.

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30/04/2026