ESSAIRA - From The Guts Of Essaira

Punkstrial from the bowels of underground Bologna. And where else could it have come from? Essaira took shape in 2023 from the creative partnership between singer and performer Paola Paganotto and musicians Angelo “Gelo” Casarrubia (guitar and effects) and Nico Pasquini (guitar and synth), all active with various projects in the Bologna scene, who in the wake of the post-Covid period and its climate of deep uncertainty - marked by a slew of far from reassuring political, social and environmental events - began writing songs to exorcise those fears, putting them down in black and white. The result of this long gestation, punctuated by a considerable number of live shows, is the instinctive "From The Guts Of Essaira", which fuses Ebm and the electro influences of PVA, the industrial and noise lashings of rising stars Mandy, Indiana, and obsessive, layered mantras intoned by Paganotto in the form of disturbing spoken word à la Throbbing Gristle's "D.O.A. The Third And Final Report Of Throbbing Gristle", faintly echoing even the diabolical, visceral litanies of Diamanda Galás.

The record is animated by the robotic cardiac flutters of "Avoidant", an electrocardiogram riding on Paganotto's dark, peremptory verses, through to the serpentine industrial coils of "De-skulled" and the hypnotic, chant-like lament of "Dramla", before detonating in the electrified interference of "Gaslight", which vaguely recalls some of the experiments carried out by Gilla Band on "The Talkies". One of the peaks comes with the minimal passages of "Gemin-i", the perfect lead-in to the dark, cutting pseudo-dance flourishes of the punchy standout track "Xirxe", which conceals veiled goth echoes and proudly celebrates the wild nature of femininity, free to claim its own choices and, above all, free from male control.

The beguiling "Not" (a surprising cover of the famous Big Thief track) offers a moment to catch breath before another peak marked by the swaying motion, rhythms and beats of "Deli", while the whispers of the brief interlude "The Wheel Of Fortune" serve as the antechamber to the redundant final invective "I.I.C.", short for "Indifference Is Complicity" - which, at this point, needs no further explanation given today's social climate. The essence of an underground fighting tooth and nail to survive, the sharp fragments hurled by "From The Guts Of Essaira" form a collage in stark opposition to a complex era that (now more than ever) seems intent on erasing (or homogenizing) at all costs whatever is seen as genuinely alternative, "other", and therefore in some way monstrous.

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20/02/2026