IOSONOUNCANE - Lirica Ucraina

The second release in the "Il suono attraversato" project, which collects the film and theatre scores by Iosonouncane, is the music for the documentary "Lirica Ucraina" by journalist Francesca Mannocchi, arriving after the soundtrack for "Berlinguer – The Great Ambition". The collaboration between two figures so significant in their respective fields could only yield meaningful results, and our hopes are not betrayed. Francesca Mannocchi's choice is to step entirely aside from the tragic events filmed in the documentary: as in a novel by Émile Zola, where the story seems to write itself, here the documentary seems to film itself, with no real filter imposed by the director. There is no judgement, no word, no opinion: everything is centred on the bare reality of the facts, highlighting the tragedy of a people deceived, wounded and ultimately betrayed, trying to survive at any cost. The director's eyes look without judging at the apocalypse unfolding before them, focusing on the material and moral devastation of every war, never specifying the place or time of the events filmed, as though conflict were an eternal sentence, placeless and timeless, tormenting humankind since its birth.

Into these scenes of ruin and destruction, Incani steps in masterfully, working in particular on synth timbres, achieving the small miracle of heightening the sense of tragedy that already permeates the documentary. The result is a soundtrack that adds power to the already extreme images of "Lirica Ucraina", without relying on a recurring melody (unlike "Berlinguer – The Great Ambition"), but keeping timbral exploration and synth pulses as a common thread. Incani imagines the sound of war in its many facets, from destroyed houses to corpses that will never see burial, from the snow and cold tormenting survivors to griefs that will never find consolation. What stands out in the choice of titles is that the word "ancora" ("still"/"again") recurs three times ("Ancora guerra", "Ancora vivi", "Ancora neve"), signalling an endless suffering, a sentence and a curse that strike millions of people in every place and every era.

The music clearly owes a debt to "Ira", the watershed album in the career of Incani, which laid the groundwork for the entire "Il suono attraversato" project. Synths, piano, samples, a touch of percussion and voice (in just two tracks) are the raw materials with which Incani builds his personal vision of the tragedy of war. The sound of "Sirene", worthy of the finest dark-ambient, is the most harrowing: a loop that repeats obsessively, foreshadowing further ill fortune to come. The jagged melodies of "Ancora guerra", the synth-and-piano rhythms of "Fuggire" (with an unrecognisable voice), the almost symphonic hints of "Macerie" mark truly elevated moments that shift the meaning of the images, adding emotion where it might seem impossible. The pulse of "Scavare, riempire, lasciare" can almost onomatopoeically evoke the very act of digging, reinforcing the survivors' pain.

"Lirica Ucraina" fades out in its final minutes with memories of before: images of a country at peace, a church, country houses and finally a field of sunflowers. Incani's music ("Girasoli") grows more ethereal, a melody emerging from the synths conveying a sense of nostalgia for what might still have been, and which instead was lost.

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27/02/2025