GAIA BANFI - La maccaia

Gaia Banfi is the daughter of Baffo Banfi, one of the heroes of the extraordinary season of Italian progressive rock, specifically the keyboardist of Biglietto per l'Inferno, authors of one of the milestones of that flourishing period. After leaving the band, he went on to pursue a solo career closer to kosmische kraut sounds (he collaborated with Klaus Schulze), which continued until 2015 with "FrontEra", in collaboration with Matteo Cantaluppi. Since then, Baffo hasn't released anything else, but I fondly remember seeing him, quite unexpectedly, at a 2018 evening in Milan for a theatre event in memory of Claudio Rocchi. That evening featured a performance by Baffo Banfi together with his daughter Gaia, still unknown to the public and at the time perhaps barely of age. The impression, even though the show lasted only a few minutes, was excellent, and left the sense that Baffo's forty-year body of work might have planted seeds that could later resurface in Gaia.

That feeling turned out to be right, and "La maccaia", Gaia Banfi's solo debut (if we set aside "Lotus" from 2020, made in collaboration with Christopher Dragone), confirms all the potential of an artist with solid theoretical training (she graduated from the Bologna Conservatory) and a clear intent to carve out a place within the Italian alternative pop-rock scene, which in recent years has found its key points of reference in Daniela Pes, Iosonouncane, Vieri Cervelli Montel, Massimo Silverio and Cadori.

Gaia Banfi was born in Milan and lives in Bologna, but La Maccaia (a word referring to the damp, sultry weather, with overcast skies and sirocco winds, typical of the Gulf of Genoa) is entirely set in Genoa, a city that Banfi transforms into a place of ancient memories and melancholy atmospheres, underscoring how the reality in front of us is destined to slowly fade into nothing (Piazza centrale). The theme of memory and a present in constant disintegration (the sky turning to oil, meaning day turning into night, silver turning black, skin growing old) underpins the track and, likely, the whole of Gaia's artistic vision.

The music evolves slowly at the edges of ambient, with backdrops of acoustic guitar and electronic textures that build in intensity (Il lungomare di Genova), up to decidedly vital moments, fairly close to Daniela Pes, with motivational lyrics (La Macaia). The hazy melody of Amar, sung in Spanish, unfolds with the same grace as the work of Massimo Silverio or of Pes herself, with whom she also shares very similar harmonic solutions.

The high point of this debut is undoubtedly Seia, with convulsive, pathos-laden synths, vocals that are at times tragic, field recordings, a children's choir, and the sense that this is the true starting point for an even more accomplished next album.

Also worth noting are the three official videos built around archive footage, which lend the music exactly that sense of recovering memories at risk of being lost forever in a modernity without a past.

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13/04/2025