My Review: Platonick Dive - Take a deep breath

 Platonick Dive - Take a deep breath

Small perceptions define the depth of a work, whether driven by instinct or not it matters little. Here, then, is a series of lights that comfort the vision of it all.

The right preface for a complex work, rooted in the purity and splashes that refresh the current world panorama of three musical genres in debt to oxygen, sees the band Platonick Dive in the narrative fabric that bypasses comprehension as it is filled with ascending textures, while also knowing how to descend to the height of the listener's inhibited reception. Songs that lead us to feel the wind beneath the waves, to perceive the embrace of neighbouring but still distant worlds. The three musicians paint the stage like diamonds to be transferred to sound, imbued with a wise and warm scenic perspective. In certain moments, the Old Scribe glimpses ancient gems from Wishplants with their mammoth Coma or Australian artist Laura with the unreachable Radio Swan Is Down, an album that the Italian band probably does not know, but whose importance they have been able to feel: how much magic is there in all this?

A trio that spreads its idea of contemplation, dream, emotion, in the vortex of a pilgrim's glide within harmonies and melodies with clear ideas, developing continuous metamorphoses with changes of rhythm, the intelligent use of electronics not at the centre but at the service of a collective sense of the individual parts.

A work that does not require improvisation and genuineness but, even more importantly, a meticulous study through which to make the compositions not a theatre but a silent journey, in which what is adjacent and nebulous intersects in the cylinder of a truly powerful need.

Post-rock guides, creates visions, but without denying the need to range in experimental games that include the most delicate shoegaze and an alternative (especially in the drumming) that allows formulas full of variety, ending up seducing and making the listening experience that encounter with the wind beneath the water, as stated above.

Almost entirely instrumental, with the impression that the vocals are hidden out of necessity but able to arrive with refinement and softness. 

There are battles of sounds, predominantly slow rhythms, often syncopated, and a prairie of arpeggios that engage the bass and drums to create the perfect cohesion, given the impressive amount of guitar textures always full of energy and poetry.

The great consolation comes from not being a masterpiece but an even more nourishing album, in that it knows how to hide part of its own face, and this constitutes an irresistible, important, and definitively more incisive fact than the masterpiece, word and deed given with too much haste and no longer credible.

The breath that is used in this situation is what is needed to feel transported, to listen again and again, as the key lies in the amount of alchemy developed so as not to repeat itself. There are dramas, sadness, nostalgia and mood riots in Take a Deep Breath, in a consequential circuit that lives in the vicinity of a sound projection that marries images in accumulation and never in transit.

As if to say: nothing is lost, but everything becomes a piggy bank that swells and makes a smile the real gain of this experience. Twelve mute stories (in appearance) that know how to come out of the tail end of fairy tales intimately devoted to solidarity: in certain episodes, one really thinks that the band is capable of writing a new language, reinforcing the writer's conviction that this is a wonderful appointment with a series of novelties that are perhaps not easy to come by.

With decisive personality, the songs present deviate a great deal from their beginnings, and in this passage of time there are clear signs of awareness and strength: it is enough to approach the listening purifying selfishness and the erroneous exercise of comparison to notice how the brushstrokes are only the marvellous deception of wooden bundles falling at the foot of the water. Robustness is more in the character than in the sound: here is the Post-Rock of the late 1990s reminding us how just a few notes, not an endless web of chords, are enough to elevate our contact with poetry.

How much benefit comes from these minutes in which we become ears that see and mouths that suggest escape? A great deal: the fan of emotions finds itself in the vicinity of thoughts, in an idyll that becomes a generating force of new impulses, gravitating in the peaceful cohabitation of dreams and horizons, yes, because the oneiric plane seems to have dressed up to come out of these persuasive notes.  The production is good, although there are some imperfections and a few small errors in the dynamics of the volumes, but believe me these are wonderful elements, which make you realise how the Live dimension is the most congenial and where errors are smiles from the goddess of music. The decision to give the minutes little chance to linger is remarkable: boredom never appears and the vitality of some solutions that come close to classical music and certain Moby and Air remixes makes the whole thing a vitaminic statement of the richness that lives in these tracks.

Ranging from the nineties to the present day, this wind beneath the skin of water plays to hide, to protect, develops obscene beauty making us rich, almost with shame. Very Italian in its production and rhythms, English in its development, this album offers multiple reflections: the sense of anticipation, emphasis, joy and those sun-filled tears that melt away fears. Tension is an important part: these tales seek out places by creating them, crowding them with sounds that range as technique, as variations and the happily deposited entrance into an album that sounds like a construction site open to the public.  It will not have success: little bad, because that would be their undoing, it will, instead, have the capacity to be a solvent, an emotional shock and a vasodilator of the senses for those who from listening will feel that they can connect with these remarkable musicians, to be able to feel that uniqueness that Platonick Dive certainly have...

Come on, let's dive into the twelve waves: we may not learn to swim, but we will know the smell of a truly incandescent encounter...

Song by Song 

1 - Intro

An electronic turbulence plunges us into a resounding deception: nothing foreshadows what is to come, the guitars, the contained explosions. But it is precisely this element of confusion that creates the sweetest snub: an intro that sounds like a perfect intrusion with its ascending algorithms, with electronics that make your mouth open wide in amazement...

2 - Carpet Ceiling

Here comes the butterfly of a six-string plotting flights in the void, supported by a swirling and military drumming, echoes of the Leech beloved by the Old Scribe induce the first tidal wave: a lullaby that seems acoustic in intentions, but able to be a warm set of cables...

3 - Lighthouse

Moby seems to be intrigued, in the first few seconds: there are points of contact with Play, but then it's a heron seducing the lower zones of the instincts, this molecule coming out of the six-string, the change of rhythm, voices in the background as if they were flying in the Tuscan sky. And these are points of contact with the leader of Durutti Column: the progression of the chords is pure catharsis

4 - Anesthetic Analgesic

It's night, it's dread, it's a glide on the guitar neck that disorients, the bass that floods the waves and the drums that give order, for a song that is a set of splashes and stop-and-go only hinted at: when modern poetry manages to present itself, as in this case, it feels like Truffaut's films, rich and settled for many years to come.  The plot has the face of the wettest Post-Rock, close to conspicuous tears, thanks to an effect that surrounds the listening and a ferocious loop that settles the blow...

5 - Naked Valley

Rover takes notes, like Bernard Butler: here the notes are streams and an almost invisible pain touches these children of the Adorable band, when shoegaze was an endless mine. A film, a quiver and a bass that slides to the feet, a truly remarkable creation...

6 - Too Beautiful To Die Too Wild To Live

Here it is, the diadem, the core of every score that enters the zone of heavenly beauty: emphatic, hermetic, blessed by its zones that seem to need the outposts of the song form. The splendour of stanzas and refrains without voices is a pure emotion...

7 - Interlude

The door opens slowly, like an interlude with delicate brushstrokes, a flicker that reaches the fingertips, a few seconds that know how to create tension: anachronostic, perverse thanks to its long, black dress on a sunny day. They are fragments of sound at the bottom of the sea...

8 - Falls Road

The Old Scribe has no hesitation: in this track lives maturity, study, algebraic ascensions of tensions in search of a perfection that the band knows how to create. Everything flows in the delicate mechanism of new pages that open second after second, displacing, generating intensity until the roll: from that moment it is a pen of light that writes history, a shining, glorious track that deserves the highest point of the podium...

9 - Blue Hour

Imagine Peter Gabriel on holiday in Tuscany, searching for faces and streets, to find peace of sight. Suddenly, Blue Hour arrives and it is a night ride that ignites the dream, the will to be there and not to flee. The track is a sphere of catharsis held soaking in sweetness, in the episodes of a crossroads that sees guitar, bass and drums speaking the same language, with roles that end up being a calendar of sound on the rise

10 - Santa Monica

The beginning is surprising, surprising, offering an unfamiliar side of the band, which seems to be waiting for the right moment to bite the listener with an electronic incipit of remarkable workmanship: simple but well done.

But no: Santa Monica is a future projection of the band, less tied to the musical genres they love and perform, rather a probing of what is to come in their curious souls. Perfect for afternoons when vices seek space, the song plays with graft and almost imperceptible references. A gem that will become a jewel when the listener has learned to see multiple capacities...

11 - Struggles & Feelings

Fifteen opening seconds: like waiting for rain with two notes and then finding yourself with a cry falling from the sky, a distortion between the reverb that kneads the throat, the drumming that shakes and the tension that visits the arpeggios. The probe's strategy is to have the memory of encounters. So does this piece, which extends the scope to generate well-intended turmoil. The rides of U2's The Edge, if it were using these effects, would know how to stay forever. The Italian band takes the oxygen and surrounds it with perfection...

12 - Tribeca

The conclusion is a toast with guitars that can remind us of The Cranberries' second album and certain solutions by Matt Johnson of The The, but then it's all in the bag for these guys who end with the most epic, poignant song, putting sand rings in the rhythm changes, a lively melody that leads to dancing and a plot that seems built to close their concerts. Then: the surprise of a crooning, male, to generate the ideal combination to emphasise what has just been heard. Where Post-Rock doesn't dare, these magnificent Platonick Dive do...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

13th September 2024

https://platonickdive.bandcamp.com/album/take-a-deep-breath