Federico Fiumani - Diaframma

Wandering restlessly through icy nocturnal rains, wearing a dark raincoat with the collar turned up and, inside, a thin yet piercing pain of Love, of the Self, of Living, letting the cold invade one's body without scruple, as if to cool insidious simmerings only to explode in a declaration of all, absolutely all the torment: "Siberia", the winter of Diaframma.

The setting in which the album was made, but even before that lived, passed through, internalized, is a crepuscular Florence of the early 80s, naturally predisposed to be touched by dark-wave melancholy and unease, the sonic incarnation of a decadently romantic, elusive soul, so cerebral as to be almost unaware of its own beauty.

Four years have passed since the death of Ian Curtis, the shadowy, tragic soul of Joy Division, but the persistence of his ghosts fills the days and the malaise of many artists, fascinated by a desolate lyricism and by clean, essential, glacial sounds.

Almost unconsciously, in a sort of perfectly transmitted imprinting, Federico Fiumani and his companions reproduce, as grateful disciples, a similarly electric shadowiness.

The title track is a sharp, invisible splinter that leaves trails of agitated footsteps in the snow in search of a lost sense of things, followed by the accelerated, tense flow of "Neogrigio", an exercise in a synthetic yet forceful lyrical stance, powerful in impact ("...your candor is bleeding out my days, wounding the glow of the night light...").

Bass opens and dominates "Amsterdam", an alienated and visionary monologue by Miro Sassolini, reaching peaks as hermetic as they are fascinating ("...in my mind everything survives in silence, I feel the friction of cries exiled from the world, like pulsing fragments of life, altered voices have dissolved..."), up to the apotheosis of the chorus ("...where the wounded day was going mad with light...").

Tension rises again, generating states of agitation, almost of flight, in "Desiderio del nulla", followed by an "Amsterdam" featuring special guests Litfiba, in which the guitars distort and the sound fills with earthy notes and bohemian instruments like the accordion, the backdrop for the interplay between Sassolini's voice and Pelù's.

Like blurred frames of deliberately burnt film, "Elena" is the album's love song and false oblivion, with a melodic, intense guitar line and a typically new-wave lyricism ("...and your face has the color of a ghostly summer, which you let fall unhurriedly like a dress, on an ordinary day...").

The album, which in its 2001 reissue includes evocative live versions of "Neogrigio", "Impronte", "Siberia" and "Elena", closes in its original edition with "Ultimo Boulevard", a sort of black-and-white short film, centered on yet another tense introspection dug out by a grim bass line.

"Siberia" would carve out an untouchable niche of its own, one that regenerates every year through its ability to faithfully render the decadent ghosts that dwell within each of us, inside a timeless case that continues to shine with its own light.

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20/10/2013