URALI - Persona

The first thought that crosses your mind reading the name Urali runs along the homonymous mountain range that cuts across Russia from the Arctic Ocean to Kazakhstan. This image, both physical and mental, pairs with the minimal cover art of Urali's record: a small isolated house on grey, bare land, mirrored in a sky only slightly bluer.

Urali is the solo musical project of Ivan Tonelli, a guitarist and sound engineer from Rimini, member of the bands Shelley Johnson Broke My Heart and Cosmetic, and the head of Stop Records and Stop Studio (Girless & The Orphan, Giona, New Adventures in Lo-Fi, Talk To Me). He calls himself a “cantaudrone” (a play on the Italian for singer-songwriter and drone) on Urali's Bandcamp profile, outlining the DNA of his compositions as a blend of songwriting, indie-folk and doom/drone music.

“Persona” is his second record, a concept album about the (real) people orbiting his emotional sphere, built mainly from guitar tracks – classical, electric, distorted into drones – and Tonelli's clear voice, which narrates his protagonists song by song. Defying the difficulties of this kind of lineup and texture, “Persona” never feels empty or lacking in any way. Quite the opposite: the sound is full, enveloping and direct, on a disarming and intense singer-songwriter album that grows with every listen, revealing the nuances of composition and arrangement across the nine tracks/portraits of the tracklist.

“George (My King)” opens the record by foreshadowing the balanced alternation between distorted sounds and elegant classical guitar arpeggios that defines the album, where this time the emotional climax is entrusted to a bed of synthesizer and the sung lyrics: “Just create something I will recall/ Change our nothingness into gold/ Just shape something my children will touch/ Create something out of nothing/ We have to be something/ We must to be something”. “Immanuel (We Don’t Have To Work In Dreams)” opens more quietly and suspended, playing with rhythms and harmonic solutions constantly varied by Tonelli's guitar, perfectly in line with the vocal melodies. The two songs that tell Hector's story – “Hector (Horror Vacui)” and “Hector (A Friend)” – build an architecture of arpeggios and distorted chord progressions, acoustic strumming passages and bursts of drones that dissolve into the next story, “Catherine (How To Manage Anger)”.

The songs follow one another like a personal, intimate “Spoon River Anthology” in which the memory of relationships is tied to the author's present, the present of the people being described, as well as the present of the sounds chosen by Urali with his studio collaborators, Andrea Muccioli (Girless & the Orphan, delay_house) and Steve Stromvik (Hierophant, Lantern). Echoes emerge of the songwriting and guitar style of Mike Kinsella (Cap’n Jazz, American Football, Owen) and Marz Kozelek (Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon), alongside sonic suggestions that enrich the backbone of the songs, such as the darkwave touches in “LZ (A Year Living Dangerously)”.

While other instruments appear sporadically, on “Persona” it's the compositions for guitar and voice that are taken to an extremely high level – I'd say unique on the national scene – where every note and every passage proves essential and precious.

“Persona” by Urali thus reveals itself for what it is: one of the musical gems made in Italy in 2016.

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18/04/2016