MACE - Maya

Ah, who knows if we'll ever learn

To get it to feel right

Even as the sky falls in the meantime

You know everything I have to say

Slips away from my hands

And meanwhile we just stand there watching the rising sea

The third album by Italian producer Simone Benussi, aka Mace, harks back more to his debut “OBE” (2021) than to his second record, “Beyond” (2022), but after a few listens, elements from both predecessors emerge, alongside some entirely new compositional traits. Songs remain at the heart of everything, and once again there's a crew of guests drawn from pop and homegrown (t)rap to soften the boundaries between sophisticated electronics and the mainstream; the intent to bring new voices and new faces to light also returns, from the man who did so much to help launch Blanco with “La canzone nostra”.

The ambitious compositional idea behind “Beyond”, however, hasn't been lost — it has simply been redirected toward finely chiseled, richly arranged songs, full of seventies echoes between psych and funk; it resurfaces in its purest form in the long closer “Il velo di Maya”, an eight-minute instrumental that owes a great deal to Pink Floyd and Sun Ra. The techno, that much is true, has almost entirely vanished, because “Maya” pushes its inspirations back in time to an era before either it or its predecessors even existed.

As was the custom fifty years ago, the album was born out of long sessions shared by artists who, fittingly, crop up repeatedly in the credits. Joan Thiele casts a spell with her sixties-style whisper on “Viaggio contro la paura”, dressed in strings and rendered uchronic by the featuring of rapper Gemitaiz, who nevertheless returns twice more: in the lysergic pop-soul of “Meteore”, alongside Izi and especially centomilacarie, the intense voice of a rising indie-pop talent; and in the gospel-tinged r 'n' b of “Fuoco di paglia”, where an impeccable Marco Mengoni stands out. centomilacarie opens with a suicidal confession on “Non mi riconosco”, paired superbly with a Salmo who drifts ever further from the muscular hip-hop of his past, thanks to interpretive gifts not every rapper possesses.

Overall, Mace combs through the midstream of Italian pop, trying to tailor a bespoke outfit for every combination of artists. At times this seems to stifle creativity, since the electronic pop of “Ruggine”, handed to Chiello and Coez, ranks among the most predictable moments in the tracklist, alongside the trap-tinged crank of “Praise The Lord” — redeemed only by its sample: productions that simply follow styles the guests have long since made their own, without the freshness they once had (on the rare occasions it was there to begin with). But Mace is also a daring tailor when he fits “Tutto fuori controllo” to Franco126, Izi and Kid Yugi, using dreamy synths, piano and a trap beat, and when the sound he mimics still proves fertile, as on “Mentre il mondo esplode”, with the charming pop-jazz-funk songwriting of Marco Castello, or on the new-age pop entrusted to Venerus on “Ossigeno”. On “Mai più” he uses a liquid-funk pretext to bring together Fabri Fibra and Fulminacci, making it sound entirely natural.

Toward the end, as mentioned, he returns to the territory of “Beyond”, first with a cross between Giorgio Moroder and Robert Miles (“Strano deserto”, feat. Cosmo and Rares) and then with “Il velo di Maya”. It feels like a way of giving coherence to an ambitious, risk-taking album, one that alternates genuine creative peaks with less inspired outings, some bland, others hard to slot into the listening flow. In the end, it falls just a notch below the previous two albums.

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03/05/2024