LIMONOV - Cose in cui non ci sei più

We're immediately struck by echoes of techno-rock sounds set within a dark aesthetic, with syncopated lyrics, curt phrases that are sometimes nonsense and a fair dose of irony. One could almost be tempted to frame these eight episodes that make up the work as a sort of "practicing Urbanism", and sure enough, reading the credits we find none other than Luca Urbani, formerly half of Soerba, then a valued collaborator of Garbo and later a solo artist. Backed by Urbani's production, born and raised between the Milan hinterland and the province of Como, since 2019 Limonov have struck a fine balance between electronic experimentation and the imagery drawn from the post-punk world.

The trio's range, however, isn't limited to music tout court, but also embraces audiovisual production, with the members working as directors and authors of short films. Visual experimentation is put to extensive use in the band's poetics, which goes as far as the confident use of artificial intelligence. With excellent results, for example, in the video for the 2020 single "The Eternal", where a deepfake of Ian Curtis was created and used as the singer's impossible alter ego. With just a handful of facial data points from the Joy Division frontman, the AI managed to map his face, modelling it onto the frontman's during the performance of the cover. In the video, Curtis seemed to come from another world, a digital paradise in which he was frozen within his own caricature.

Born of an alternative electronic approach and adorned with noise and industrial touches, the album's tracks reconstruct the jagged, decaying contours of lived experience, not always an ideal one. From childhood memories ("Il primo cane", one of the most convincing episodes) to human relationships ("Cose in cui non ci sei più"), everything turns into a nightmare ("Il giorno e l'ora"), leaving the impression of a world crumbling apart, an unpleasant sense of short-circuit that advances until it blankets everything in a negativity beyond repair.

Among them all, we pick out "Camere a gas", an alienating-toned ballad in which a clearly dark-rooted music is overlaid with the oppressive narrative of something inexorably being lost: fragments of life, memories and images follow one another with the guitars supporting the minimal electronics. Dark sonic carpets underpinning ever-effective melodies, a creeping, almost intangible emotional charge that seeps into the listening experience, carrying the music into an ultrasonic dimension.