My Review: La Grazia Obliqua -

 My Review 

La Grazia Obliqua - Canzoni d'amore e morte e altri eventi accidentali

Rome, the lazy Divine always able to bring out some jewels from its belly. 

Rome, take a good look at it: there fate affects the will and fights silence with its own dark light.

Rome, which sprays water into the black craters of the world revolving around tragedy, can still give birth to angels in dark clothes, without it making them  executioners.

From the trees full of ancient oxygen comes La Grazia Obliqua, a combo that gets in contact with drama and intelligence by bringing characters full of beauty and value, in order to walk through the catacombs of the Roman surface, often shifting the boundaries of this will.

Their music is a splendid stratagem: as masters of words and thoughts willing to be blades of light, they plunge into sounds that starting from revisited and corrected neo-folk, float in art wave which seduces us and Darkwave which supports those inevitable heaviness that have to emerge.

The atmosphere permeates the breath with astonishment and a cheerfulness that reckon with the seriousness of time, but everything is bearable since witches and wizards live together, leaving each other alive: what we hear and see is magic, like a waterfall that first cleans wounds and then gives dreams.

And like the legacies of an ancient parchment, these Roman guys collect the silences and their secrets to use their hands as skilful sirens that know how to kill death in order to seduce for eternity.

Michael Nyman, Philip Glass and Brian Eno, united in consensus, seem to be the guardians of their sound: the band has a distinct personality that allows them to sail through musical genres without leaving obvious traces, like thieves legalised only for a few moments because in their granary the flour is produced by them.

Songs as a crystal-clear refuge of a rhythm that skilfully combines with melody, where quality reigns undisturbed: there is no noise but light that shines upon trembling weak forces, as if everything was put on a stage and to illuminate it was the mystery of the snow that sings words full of African sand.

The growing darkness that instead of terrorising is able to console, where intimacy becomes the sweetness of tragedies that show their side, makes this album a rosary without thorns on its head but in the boundless space of thoughts we can find all the pain.

The expressive force reaches heartbreaking peaks and we can see first-hand what is graceful and dreamlike, as if the melodies and the sound structures were allied to convey the feeling of loss that is stamped on the skin of this album.

An eclectic, fluid, sinful and swirling work which expands and offers bouquets of flowers with golden petals, using slowness as the deceptive kiss of an era that has always blown on the capital.

Let us now open the parchment, we will be Patricians and Plebeians with modern discomforts. A little grape in our hands and off we go: we’re about to eat the beauty....

Song by song

Antro/ The meeting room

Like a musical fairy tale performed by Douglas Pierce (whom we will find later), with Alessandro Bellotta's recitative (a comparison with Massimo Volume's Emidio Clementi can be expected, but it immediately proves to be inappropriate) everything vibrates to be thrown away by Alessandra Trinity Bersiani. With her entrance the music changes and everything becomes lunar, suspended and sensual. And this crossover between the two parts slips away with a sublime electronic background. Like an injection to calm fears, the track sinuously opens the telluric but slow dance.

L'ultimo Sipario

Germany imposes itself: Kraftwerk and Daf, with the mystery of the equally seminal NamNamBulu, and the most melodic Rammstein are the godfathers of this war, with the sky being struck violently by lyrics that are magnificent in their images, dripping with silences that calm any impetus. The final guitar solo brings to mind Gonge's progressive rock and space rock to harden the whole in generous abundance.

Landscapes (reanimated)

Rome gets up to go dancing: the clothes are made of lead-coloured silk, heavy steps, the trail of sound that follows the scene to make this track the distant echo of Camouflage drenched in restlessness, among electronic beats and sudden openings in the refrain. Something soft advances, but there is always this pleasant feeling of a song that wants to slowly nail the world's misfortune to the cross. The Synthpop seems shy, but manages to oxygenate the clothes and lead the whole thing towards the fog that protects the lump in the throat.

Fall Apart 

The Roman guys are brave: they challenge the sacred land of Death in June with a version of Fall Apart. An operation that leaves me intellectually in disagreement: I would have preferred another of their songs.

But I appreciate the ability to make it wear a less sacred and more intimate dress, suspended from the beginning by the electronic music that creates pathos and takes away from the acoustic guitar that tension which was the peculiarity of the song, together with the lyrics. Here, however, musically everything becomes more complex and interesting and the two voices occasionally overlap creating a melancholic suggestion.

Prima del Diluvio

The beauty of a piano that seems to have been played by the fingers of a Paolo Conte in a good mood and that crosses the nights and the smoke of a clandestine gambling club in Detroit quickly gives way to a more robust approach on which Andrea Chimenti, with the sensual lyrics by Alessandro Bellotta, puts his warm and hypnotic voice in an amazing and surprising track. Everything swells with shadows and light in the eyes. And it is vitamin for the heart which, strong, spreads intense heat.

La Figlia di Iorio

From one astonishment to another: with the beginning partly reminiscent of 16 Horsepower's American Wheeze, here we are in the spring equinox in which everything has the courage to come out, although a witch appears to complicate everything. But the band from Rome has the tools ready to let good win in the fierce ash-filled history. When neo-folk is coupled with dark-noir, as in this case, a sphere of light that generates life cannot fail to emerge. And the female recitation in the end provides a further surprise with the suspense that keeps us pleasantly involved.

L'eterno era notte

With an inkling of a thunderstorm coming in the first tenths of a second of the track, The Cure of Disintegration appear to build the musical base on which the two voices, placed side by side, bring us Franco Battiato in the lyrics and in the way of singing. But there is room to hear the band's own harmonies in the veins of this gem, that they shamelessly keep almost hidden. It settles in our head and becomes a mantra full of seduction, which in the part where the guitar takes space brings us violet-painted roses. Wonderful!

Mishima

There is no end to the breeze that oxygenates the skin of the heart: Mishima is a new spark that musically surprises because it visits additional new territories and like an earthquake of the senses reveals the kindness that welcomes these talents which invoke our listening.

Controlled soul tones in evidence, electro-pop that sends kisses to a disguised trip-hop and something jazzy hovers, making the track a sonic walk on the lunar surface. The whole thing is rarefied and well-packaged, launching Rome into the future, in a silence more supported by modern foundations. 

If they had envisaged an attempt in order  not to be defeated by darkness, they have succeeded perfectly.

R/ESistere

Let's not deny it: this album is a crescendo of gentle embraces that lead to a hunger for beauty.

And it all comes to an end with this umpteenth sound system which moves at first for what it evokes, like the conclusion of a medieval war.

Then, in the vocals that unite Douglas Pierce with Cristiano De André (an absurd hypothesis, but one that materialises with an immense result), an apocalyptic version of life makes its way in which music is its faithful companion. This is really a journey: it starts in the eternal city and glides into the future made of lightning and drums that seek and find a perfect union in the new sound machines, transporting everything into the dimension of ungovernable restlessness. And it will exist by continuing to resist, because works like these will be elements of wisdom to be considered and not just a filling space of  sound.

Highly recommended album for everyone!

The Album will be released on March 31, 2022

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

26th March 2022