24 Grana

'A fantasia è nu cielo niro e ll'uocchie p'ò pittà

(from "Stai mai ccà")

Always tightly bound to their city, Naples, 24 Grana were one of the most singular and intriguing experiences on the Italian independent scene at the turn of the millennium. A musical saga that, while keeping its roots firmly planted in its own territory and always remaining strongly identifiable, never hesitated to change its sound time and again, giving Francesco "Ciccio" Di Bella's engaging storytelling a new guise with every release.

The story of Ciccio, Renato Minale (drums), Armando Cotugno (bass) and Giuseppe Fontanella (guitar) began around 1995, in the Naples of the posses and the centri sociali, drawing on the dub influences and the recurring use of electronics typical of that scene. Coming from as difficult a reality as that one, political commitment, activism and a strongly socially-conscious songwriting approach were an inevitable direction for the band. Practically a "non-choice".

24 Grana's songs were almost bound to tackle the themes of the Camorra, drug addiction in North Naples, the decay of the outskirts, the poverty that seeped through even the city's central arteries, and, more forcefully, the indifference of the state in the face of it all. And that's exactly what they did.

However, the Naples setting was never merely the target of the band's invectives; rather, it served as the backdrop for the poetic stories of Francesco Di Bella. A mountain of shit from which pure white flowers could bloom, from which to witness wondrous sunrises and lose one's gaze in the infinity of the sea. Certainly protest music, but deeply intimate and individualistic, charged with hope and an unexpected tenderness.

True to the spirit of their city, hyper-contaminated in every respect, from its architecture to the skin tones of its inhabitants, 24 Grana's sound is also a melting pot. We've already mentioned dub and electronica, which were the starting points for the band's sound at the time of their debut album, "Loop", released in 1997. But indie-rock, especially of American inspiration, along with folk and singer-songwriter traditions - Neapolitan first and foremost, but also national - are equally essential ingredients in the band's mix.

While it's debatable whether "Metaversus" (La Canzonetta, 1999) is the best record 24 Grana ever made - a title it will eternally contest with the follow-up "K Album" - it's beyond dispute that it represents the point in the band's discography where the various souls of the mix achieve perfect balance, giving rise, together with an iconic and stubborn use of Neapolitan dialect straight out of the streets, to a unique and unrepeatable result.

It's fair, for instance, to call "Loop" a dub record; "K Album", on the other hand, can be identified as an indie-rock work; just as one can safely say that "Ghostwriters" sees the band beginning to lean toward a strongly singer-songwriter path. In "Metaversus", however, not only is everything there - the dub, the electronica, the indie-rock guitars and Di Bella's poetic instinct - but everything coexists and contributes synergistically to the creation of one of the most iconic sounds ever produced by the Italian independent scene.

Buongiorno, e allora?

le uniche difficolta ad entrare nel giovane nuovo mondo possono essere di carattere personale

ingenuità sensibilità fantasia sono finalmente tollerate

potenziamento del bagaglio emotivo

up-gradazione della vostra libertà individuale

estensione delle facoltà sensitive

tutto può dipendere ora dalla vostra volontà

"Metaversus" arrived during what was, for 24 Grana, a period of great creativity. Thanks to intense word-of-mouth, "Loop" was (at least within the underground) a big success and earned the quartet numerous live dates across the country, particularly in the South. Their intense touring activity was soon documented on a live album recorded during a show at Naples' Teatro Nuovo, simply titled "Loop Live".

Despite an almost relentless touring schedule, by 1999 the band had managed to write numerous new songs, so much so that during one of their rare breaks from the road they managed to put together their eagerly awaited second LP. Recorded in a studio on the peaceful, secluded island of Procida, "Metaversus" came out right while the band was in the midst of a non-stop tour.

Di Bella's critical, ironic gaze on the drifts of present-day and future society is once again at the heart of the project, and it's already evident in the concept underpinning the album. The LP, and in particular its opening track "Nel metaverso", are in part inspired by Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash", a post-cyber-punk novel set in a 20th century direly at the mercy of anarcho-capitalism and, in parallel, in a fabled digital metaverse populated by the three-dimensional avatars of its citizens (you getting this, Zucky?).

Dragged along by a spiky, feisty electric guitar riff and Di Bella's smooth, cybernetic pied-piper tone, the phenomenal opener "Nel metaverso" throws open the doors of an album that's totally different from its predecessor, with the balance between reggae and rock influences completely reworked.

Once inside "Metaversus", what unfolds before us is a run of the band's classics, moulding rock, electronic and dub elements at will while telling stories of alienation and hope.

Non vedo e non sento

e tutto ciò che rappresento lo invento

Electronics as slippery and sly as the best Subsonica, a roaring, dry electric guitar riff hacked out by Fontanella with an axe, and lyrics loaded with chemical substances, snarled in Italian with venom by Di Bella, come together to form an anti-social diatribe on the impossibility of belonging to and feeling represented by a stubbornly conformist collective. Minale and Cotugno's rhythm section is relentless and lashing, only easing off in the brief interludes with their laid-back reggae flavour.

The two switch gears, just as Di Bella switches to Neapolitan, on the more good-humoured "Vesto sempre uguale". Here the rhythm section, though still tense, sets a dub pace and weaves together with the electronic lines and a fluid, lively guitar in an indie-pop vein. A few fierce blasts of distorted guitar appear only to stir up the iconic chorus, repeated to the point of exhaustion: "Vesto sempre uguale e nun so' mai crisciuto". Here the difficulty of belonging becomes a need for mimicry, anonymity, a refusal to grow up rather than conform.

With its stride still Jamaican, though not yet fully stoned, "Nun me movo mai" opens a more liquid, relaxed central section of the album, where shadowy sonic textures, downtempo rhythms and fleeting flashes of poetry take centre stage - alongside, of course, the Neapolitan dialect, which from this point on becomes utterly dominant.

"Ll'uocchie mie, ll'uocchie mie, ll'uocchie mie sanno guarda'", sings Di Bella in a resigned tone, with an autumnal melodic gait, on "La pena". All around him swell the unsettling vibrations of a dark, pulsing electronic heart à-la Massive Attack, while Fontanella lets his guitar break into a bittersweet, melancholy cry.

Nun saccio maje si aggio avuto custanza

Nun saccio maje

Nun saccio maje

Nun saccio maje si aggio avuto custanza

Nun saccio maje

Nun saccio maje

The opening of the second part of "Metaversus" is one of the band's best-known classics: "La costanza". Minale's crisp, plastic-toned rolls, Fontanella's inventive guitar work - here too shifting seamlessly between reggae phrasing and indie lashes - and electronics that have never been so imaginative and varied, wrap around Di Bella's "vasciaiolo" vocal delivery, which, despite chiding itself for lacking the constancy needed to change the course of things, manages to lift our spirits and pull us into its irresistible melodic vortex.

Amid wilting strings and a guitar riff devoted to American indie-rock of the '81-'91 decade, "Le abitudini" instead foreshadows the moods and stylistic shift that will define the "K Album" two years later.

Nun me mporta e capì

Si veco sulo e serpienti

Je parlo e tu nun me siente maje, nun me siente maje

After such a shadowy triptych, the riff that grabs "Resto acciso" by the throat and its sinister electronic whirlpools feel even more violent. Constant contrasts (above all, between a virulent, overwhelming guitar and a clear, mournful piano), moments of stasis, sudden bursts of noise and lyrics about drugs devoid of any indulgence make it one of the most layered and accomplished tracks the band has ever written.

It's joined in that category by the album's closing track, "Stai mai ccà", another episode on the theme of drugs (hashish), though it carries a completely different mood, as if the band wanted to send the listener off with a luminous, hopeful message, or at least one of escape. The bpm crackles as lively as popcorn, the electronic loops are rays of sunlight, and the guitar arpeggio is placid and soothing. It's the perfect setting for a choir of Neapolitan fairies singing "chiude ll'uocchie e suonne stai mai cca'". It's a phenomenon that occurs very often in Neapolitan music, the almost sudden juxtaposition of near-brutal moments with relaxed, pacifying ones. A device I like to call "explosions of sweetness amid the rubbish". Also carried along by the delicate drawings made by Davide Toffolo for its video, "Stai – Mai – Ccà" would a few years later become the soundtrack to Antonio Boccola and Paolo Vari's cult movie "Fame chimica".

With no dips or weaker moments compared to the rest, to all intents and purposes a masterpiece of Italian alternative rock straddling the turn of the millennium, "Metaversus" thrust 24 Grana into the spotlight of an ever-growing audience and earned them the praise of the national specialist press. Rumore even dedicated a cover story to them.

As mentioned, "Metaversus" shouldn't necessarily be seen as the peak of the Neapolitan band's career, but rather as the most representative primer of their hugely varied and unique style. At least two more masterpieces would follow, "K Album" and "Ghostwriters", along with other worthwhile records.

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12/06/2022