LILI REFRAIN - Nagalite

At Lili Refrain's concerts you immediately sense the almost physical strain of handling, entirely alone, a complex music built on a dense web of loops layered through the use of no fewer than five loopers: a technique that demands not just control, but an uncommon degree of concentration. A performative practice that becomes an integral part of her poetics, where repetition - and thus minimalism - turns into ritual, evoking in some ways the sonic liturgies of Dead Can Dance and heightening the trance-like effect induced by repetition.

"Nagalite" arrives four years after "Mana" (2022), probably the Roman guitarist's ritual-folk summa, and marks a shift that is as evident as it is measured, condensed into just four tracks. On one hand Lili Refrain strips things back (fewer percussions and folkloric elements), on the other she adds to them (more guitar and more synth).

A track like "Coil", with its synth line suspended between Kraftwerk and Arnaud Rebotini, would have been hard to imagine on "Mana", just as the iterative guitar figure of "Nagal" marks a significant departure within her discography. The traditional music element - in the vocals and in some melodic lines - doesn't disappear, but loses its priority role, becoming just one possible layer rather than the gravitational center.

"Lithos", clocking in at twelve minutes, ideally closes the circle opened by the three initial minutes of "Exuvia": a kind of secular prayer, an invocation of change unfolding like a long pagan ritual of transformation. Here synth beds build a suspended space, while the voice takes on an almost liturgical centrality, before a final guitar coda unsettles the balance once again, suggesting that the transformation is still underway.

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20/04/2026