My Review: One Little Atlas - Wayfarer

One Little Atlas - Wayfarer

A sonic scarf rises up from Manchester to take a stroll through the heart of male sensibilities, restoring light that has been lacking for too long in the northern English city. The delicacy, the horizons traversed and the mode make this work a romantic sunflower well equipped to withstand wear and tear. Two creators who, ten years on, return to unsettle with an enchanting treatise of beauty, whispers, rumbles taken by the hand and made to surrender. Kevan Hardman (owner of a stratospheric, bombastic timbre and possessing a vibrant propensity for caressing the pentagram on which his vocal chords rest) and Dean Jones (electronic wizard and messenger of complicated melodic textures made comprehensible and consequently absolutely capable of seizing the senses), are the main contributors to this album, assisted, perfectly, by the Up North Orchestra and Heather Macleod, Helena Francesca, Rosie Brownhill, Tim Davies and the backing vocals of Rose Feaver, Lynn Shuttleworth, Siobhan Donnelly and Obie & Kitt. With an impetus that approaches the mode of classical music, but using the modern means of the gentlest and most rarefied electronics, the tracks bring out with continuous vibration the certainty that an artistic expression can exist in our time that gathers moonbeams, peace, contemplation and discipline in bringing chaos to transform itself into a dew that refreshes the listener. 

And there appear whispers and changes in the textures that take it beyond the song form, with expansions and experimentation so similar to progressive, but without having the style. Here we visit the depth of the sound and its gathering of slow, kaleidoscopic pinwheels in the musical rainbow that uses all the notes to lighten the breath and the eyes. With Post-Rock attitudes but in moderate parry and the use of stratagems in keeping with the New-Age, the two take the responsibility of being whispers and catapult themselves into the subtlest orchestration, almost as if they did not want to disturb and intended to give us the opportunity of a cognitive experience capable of underlining the distance between the world they created and our own. Therefore, a deep falling in love becomes inevitable and not a lightning strike: no artificial seduction to attract the stupid, but a depth that is born and develops with the master hand of slowness. They scour folk territories with gracefulness, they penetrate dream pop with deep respect (without copying, but presenting remarkable novelties), they enter the British tradition with excellent revisiting quality, streamlining the ambient matrix that generously shows its boundaries and branches. The ethereal aspect is lightened by the constant sacredness that one finds when listening to it from other composers: here is a new aspect that rides on the structure of the two Mancunian outliers, who decide to discard the possibility of an exaggerated moral and philosophical commitment, building instead a garden always prone to freshness, with flowers that shine without ceasing. These compositions are nothing more than bubbles of hope that cling to the dream, while also releasing a real capacity for innovation, sowing light but powerful bricks to keep our minds wrapped up and protected. The keyboards, when they paint the confetti of notes, manage to make us smile, and then touch our emotional chords in a resounding alternation, destabilising, combing disbelief. 

The voice is a miracle educated in the atonement of sins, a kangaroo leap beyond the universe, a soft calamity, perfectly blunted and able to make the eyes and thoughts dreamy. Remarkable is the work of the rhythmic aspect, which, although in the hands of a drum machine, manages to make us perceive humanity, talent and power, without ever overpowering the delicate harmonisations. When you hear the light touches of the piano, you sense how classical music is present to whisper, inspire, point the way, without taking over, in a marriage of sighs and alchemy that is truly remarkable.
They have courage, these two angels with golden feathers: they put on the market a work heedless of fashions, of the habit of packaging something convenient and hasty, demonstrating what art should be, namely a generous exercise without the desire for reception, eliminating usufruct, nourishing instead continuous emotions...

Eleven episodes that flow impeccably. 

The opening Ascend (a synthetic pill in the odour of orchestral sanctity and with hidden trip-hop petals), opens the amazement, then the duo enters a meadow with the seductive Lyn, Devotion arrives and we understand how everything is rising, like a spirit in the act of its formation.
 Between post-rock and dream pop the emblematic Roads throws us into a track full of flowers and the emotion sticks to bodies and minds.

When Holo arrives you are clouds in the wind, Kevan and Helena Francesca's voices are dancing ecstasy on a sound film whispering smiles and the shimmer of stars.

Of Love reminds us of the importance of Vini Reilly (The Durutti Column), adding an essential and spectacular electronic mood to the splendidly scratchy guitar.

The album's title song (Wayfarer) is the aurora borealis narrated through celestial notes, in a peal of both sound and emotion: when dreams become matter they have this liturgical mode...
The surprises and novelties continue: Realise is a journey into the waves, as if anaesthetised only to be reinvigorated by a mysterious energy that Kevan's vocal expression manages to translate. New-age finds a perfect contact with world-music and trip-hop and everything becomes a golden cloak. Ceremony is a sudden jolt: the rhythm, the base, its development, the metrics of the singing are embraced poems, perfectly able to give confidence to the modernity that the electronic part offers.

Classical music was mentioned, and with Twilight its charm is transported to the present day, like a feather flying like a turtle: from its slowness, the vocals manage to accelerate, in a feeling that this combination is a new miracle...
The concluding Autonomous is a crazy farewell: the kisses of time and the exploration of souls meet in song, as in a marriage of the stars. John Grant would be happy to see how Kevan is aligned with his ability to express feelings with breaths of sound that gravitate in the low register, but give the feeling of elevation to the edges of the sky. Spectacular!

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

14th November 2023

https://onelittleatlas.bandcamp.com/album/wayfarer?search_item_id=643428781&search_item_type=a&search_match_part=%3F&search_page_id=2963665930&search_page_no=0&search_rank=3&logged_in_mobile_menubar=true

My Review: Neraneve - Neraneve

Neraneve - Neraneve

There are high altitude breaths among the sound beams of which the songs are composed, capable of making gravity a molecule full of wind. It happens in this debut EP by a band coming from Ciociaria, from the city of Frosinone always eager to carve out a slice of consideration. Five delicate intentions aimed at probing melancholy and sadness, removing from them the lead that is usually generously offered by precise musical genres. Instead, the three musicians/artists lean toward brightening it up by opting for shoegaze, interspersed with dreampop beats, for a result that is truly surprising.
The range of smells coming out of the compositions seems to come from different places, from a temporal range that includes the last three decades: great is the vibration they know how to place in every single episode, for a scrupulous and powerful fabric, worthy of being put in front of more lofty names. Bold, meticulous, with a great care for sound, everything flows, like a pleasant seizure of the soul, with the eyes looking at the void to fill it with the wake of these songs, twins of the moon's rays and cousins of the sun's. One passes between light and shadow lightly, piloting the mood towards understanding a sensory state filled with sensitivity.It is music that makes clear the absence of a lazy attitude because of the fantasy and rhythmic attitude that leads to a dreamy dance, intent on pausing on a cloud that oscillates between gray and yellow spots.
It all begins with Vento, an emotional probe that, through hinted electronics, opens the lungs in an embrace reminiscent of Slowdive’s Souvlaki, to deliver memories a foothold in the mantra that governs the entire piece. It overpowers the pain and arrives at an awareness of the choices to be made. Dreamy and vibrant, it is an assured smash hit, in which sadness smiles between these sublime seconds...
With Quasi niente the pace picks up, the guitars prove extremely capable of taking the melody and bringing the soft part of existence to the sides of a sombre play, but generous at the same time in giving the impression that one hears it all on the back of the clouds. Magliocchetti's voice is a talkative, genuine caress, with tears adopting joy, almost hidden (as is customary in shoegaze), but extremely gifted in knowing how to intrigue the auditory apparatus.

Atmosfera is a slow plunge, a letting loose of sweet sparkling tears, into the field where the reverberation grows in tone, dresses up, and descends into the valley. As curled up, on a sleet-filled day, it succeeds in a sweetest miracle: bringing an American attitude to the centre of the ciociara city, with shoegaze triumphing without needing to generate walls of chaos and distortion.
From the hieratic Grandine we receive a solemn embrace: we ascend to the Garden of the Gods in less than four minutes, but there is no doubt that, starting with the brief, oceanic introduction, we arrive well poised in the zone where drumming, vocals and guitars establish contact with the grandeur of a truly remarkable composition. Reading and London, as well as Boston and Chicago, look on enviously...Concluding this sampler of beauty is Ologramma, which, after the very first few seconds that seem to bring Visage to mind, mixes certain heavy attitudes of The Cure’s Disintegration with the more subtle ones of Churchhill Garden, to knock on the doors of a dreamlike trend that makes our breathing thin. Interweaving wandering, sensual guitars over a syncopated rhythm stick the need for a quick listen again, and another...
The guitars of Giacomo Tiberia and Marcello Iannotta are a gift from heaven: enchanting textures and sounds to visit and keep in the heart. A truly well-structured work, with the beauty of the feeling that we have discovered outliers: let the intelligence be given to embrace this trio...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

9th November 2023

https://neraneve.bandcamp.com/album/neraneve-ep?search_item_id=1146832973&search_item_type=a&search_match_part=%3F&search_page_id=2954368309&search_page_no=0&search_rank=1&logged_in_mobile_menubar=true

My Review: Black Swan Lane - Dead Souls Collide

 Black Swan Lane - Dead Souls Collide

ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2023

The sky fills with water, a reverse deluge has been spotted by the ever-awake eyes of a man perpetually clinging to his duality, non-confrontational, aimed at living the opposite aspects of life, where good and evil rage relentlessly. An artist who writes about the contemporary like few others, retaining the support of a past that has taught, shown fists and caresses. From Atlanta, USA, we witness an event that, starting from the vault of heaven, descends into our thoughts disarming defenses, gaining applause that smells of adoration with no possibility of changing intention.

Dead Souls Collide is the eleventh album under the Black Swan Lane name, because of Jack Richard Sobel's choice not to give up with what he had created, even though he actually remained the only real musician. All this gives the American author rivers of freedom and chains in continuous diffusion, so that he can celebrate his rays of action with authenticity. We witness an evident compositional maturity, the use of experience and creativity in support of a sonic beam that is still robust and sensual, but adding a mysterious zone born of a skillful interweaving of music and words. He amazes us, confirming that his visionary world is indeed above expectation, painting the sound yes with the usual wall of guitars but managing to blend the messages, the moody and moral propensities toward the intense and gray expressions of a pentagram pregnant with pain and at the same time with confidence, a seductive embrace that knows how to stun and nourish the dimly lit alleys of our thoughts.The Rock formula remains the preferred one, always accompanied by a Post-Punk pulse, gravitating elegantly in waves in which the shimmer and passion for Shoegaze, Alternative and Sad Pop remain well in view, in the design complexity that has always testified to the qualities of this funambulist artist. Songs that shock, slip under the beat, behind the channels of the mental labyrinth to take up residence. Eleven breaths illuminated by the obesity of the world, by a critical will that is increased, specifying itself in the behavioral complexity that, starting from personal, couple relationships, knows how to reach the collective, for a respectful attack against mediocrity.

There is no shortage of surprises, both in style, mental approach, and new rituals that make one think, as is often the case with Jack, of a concept album, to give continuity and depth to this swimming in the time of degradation. What remains intact is his ability to strip away the masks, to deposit the inevitable inside guitars that are full of salt, dissolving our listening in a bath of solitude immersed in water filled with trails. Loneliness is described as both an opportunity and a condemnation that cannot be denied, delegating surely better but not credible opportunities to dreams. Sobel opens the journal of life pregnant with words that know how to break the crystals of security and deception. To do this, his voice is mutated, veering into the most searing and ghostly drama, laying his tonsils on the most bent and mystical sentiments, disintegrating and comforting, taking our breath away, filling our ears with truly commanding intimate connections. 

If the previous Hide in View (2021) and Blind (2022) had shown a more rocky, noisy flair, with rhythm at the centre of every intention, with Dead Souls Collide we come to terms with a truly imposing weighting, with the songs placed one after the other with intelligence, to give the listener the continuity, elegance and sense of a path that, through steps that are never confused, knows how to build an ocean within our tears.Black Swan Lane attack, make visible a wall of notes that scratch the black to leave in the sky the possibility of a white that can at least smile once in a while.

Some waste time looking for the band's roots, the similarities, making comparisons: bad journalism never dies. Rather: let's give this still-unknown molecule a chance to be evaluated in itself, to glimpse originality that is not lacking, to catch a glimpse of something unique that is not hard to discern. Listening reveals a soul that plants its flag in the place of intimacy, a concession that does not serve to become the artist's friend but rather the mode through which one can take a melancholy but lively tour near one's now weary footsteps. The work is dynamic, in this sense, in that it opens the arms of rainbows, and it matters little if the feeling of pessimism seems to win out, for it does not.The beauty of this work consists of an innumerable series of novelties, to make it all sound like a sprint, giving away the pangs and sighs, the upsets and dreams within melodies that seem to have been found under the skin of a highway: whether the rhythm is slow or fast matters little since everything leaks out with precision, matching the roar of the guitars with a wise electronic dose, making the best use of the software and modes granted by modernity. 

The drumming is, as always, dry, expressive, powerful and imaginative, in the cacophonous embrace with the bass, again a protagonist, but in this musical work more at the service of the numerous guitars that, bleeding, deadly, dynamic, corrosive, sensual, manage to be the protagonists of frothing-at-the-mouth songs. The keyboards, piano, and samples are Jack's further form of residency, a fact in itself begun already for at least two albums, to give this outfit a spectacular and unimpeachable poise.The highlighted chaos is a cuddle in the cradle of the quiver, with songs that make people dance, reflect, shake their spirits, for a clear murder of the superfluous. Hard work, meticulous, focused, and needing to shove aggressive but respectful poise in the face. Thrown arrows, chandeliers broken in the face, screams, sand-filled wings, and the swelling breath, hallucinated but aware: further evidence of a completeness that grants no replication. Jack has written his most intense moment: all that remains is to shower in such beauty and decide whether or not to follow him....

Arm yourselves with curiosity: eleven splinters are about to reveal themselves....

Song by Song

1 Covenant

The song that opens the album has hypnotic and mysterious lyrics, with a sly lead guitar that fits perfectly into the scratchy ones, with a keyboard that glues, almost secretly, this envelope to our attention. In the style of the last two works, it shows interesting signs of being able to transport a rock nature to the shoegaze cloud, without overdoing it. Valuable.

2 The Sacrifice

First jolt, within a lyric that knows how to combine criticism and bitterness, in a relational plan that also deals with the religious aspect, with a sound system that alternates a Post-Punk bass with electric and semi-acoustic guitars to reach a Sad Pop refrain that sticks in the mind. The melody is minuscule but capable of hypnotizing, like a cloak of sand on a rainy day. Acidic and powerful.

3 Crushed

In the powerful final solution of a considerable amount of pills as a necessary anesthesia towards relational fatigue, the piece is a powerful animal beat, with the drumming beating, within the interplay of rhythmic electric guitars and arpeggios with semi-acoustic ones. The vocals are a perfectly synchronized mantra with significant structure, as they show (especially with the bass) a deep connection to the songs of their early albums. Pregnant with acid, like a gentle slap in the face, this track underscores BSL's ability to aim well and hit the target. Mighty.

4 Push Me Under

The demons of the mind expose in the lyrics their attitudinal trades, an imbalance, a loneliness, a fall supported by a full-bodied and sweet melody, over a good beat, for a song that confirms the willingness to hold hands with the need to dance syncopatedly with a dreamy structure. A gem to cuddle.

5 Thorns

How perfectly to combine pessimism and positive momentum: brilliant lyrics for a colossal track, with a horror imprint perfectly confirmed by the voice (with its singing) and the instruments, capable of creating tremors. Gloomy and skillful in making the approach of mental death palpable, it finds a way in the chorus and subsequent sound cascades of guitars to stick in the mind. Extraordinary.

6 Forever Lost

Featuring Robyn Elizabeth Abrams on vocals for a very few but significant seconds (emotional, thrilling, an excellent insertion), this sonic gem possesses enormous merit: it leads the memory back to Post-Punk glimmers in a melodic core that comforts, since the lyrics do not allow as much room for smiles. The guitar revolves around the need to combine rhythm and arpeggio managing to stun perfectly: intense.

7 Alone As Me

The most spectacular moment of this eleventh work, the track with the most minutes, like a long drama exposed in a dual mode: a decadent and slow first part, a vibrant second part, then repeating, for a whole that leads directly to weeping. All the discomfort of living seems to collapse within this stage that also allows moments of tenderness. Sepulchral and stunning.

8 Under My Wings.

Without a shadow of a doubt the album's masterpiece: everything works perfectly, showing, among many other things, how Jack knows how to tame his voice and bring it, within a higher and more powerful register, into a hallucinated visual space full of power, giving the words a very convincing acting act. Powerful and surgical in both music and lyrics, he knows how to displace, to lead the listener into a fascine wet with enchanting and desperate tears. Perfect and surgical.

9 A Place Where The Light Dies

Here we are confronted with the tenderness of a musical structure seemingly devoted to sweetness that is quickly shattered by a marvellous chaos, to a singing full of darkness and pain, with guitars at once bleeding and reflective. A perfect summation of Jack left as the sole creator of the whole, free to traverse the possibility of compacting extreme sides and making them coexist with ease and ease. Powerful, dreamy, full of ardor and weed within a dreamy planet. Another prodigy.

10 Ghosts (instrumental)

Perfect coda to the previous song and anticipator of the next one, we find ourselves in the magnetic field of a day when autumn is a light blanket reaching for the sky, tempting tears to tear away their silence. Sweet, bitter, perfect.

11 Inhibitions 

Jack knows the way to give intimacy the perfect sound, surrounding it with mystery, slowing down the frenzy and placing it all, perfectly, as the last track, with a guitar that flexes sadness toward the desire for light. With words that sound like a declaration of love without denying the difficulty of living, he represents Elizabeth for a perfect mantra that slows down every rush for a finale that like perfect glue brings intention and actual possibilities together for a magnetic and meaningful result. Dreamy and necessary.

Jack's best work as a soloist. The intensity expressed gives everyone the possibility of a deep dive into the murky water of our breaths. With subsequent challenging need to structure thought toward new shores.

Old Scribe's Album of the Year: give space to the need to find in music a breath of wind that leads us away from all fragility...

Out on December 12 2023

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

5 November 2023

My Review: Gintsugi - The Elephant in the Room

 Gintsugi - The Elephant in the Room

"We are never so helpless towards suffering as in the moment when we love."

Sigmund Freud

This beat, pilgrim, tired, eager, white, descends from its throne and crashes on the craggy planes of the mind, the nuclear powerhouse of all pain. Stories, vicissitudes, various contortions, well-assorted and ill-assorted, squeeze into the existence that seeks footholds. Into this context comes a woman with a sharp tongue, an iron wrist, a discipline that positions itself in every gesture, thought, with gentle ferocity, to allow her a wide range of action. Her name is Gintsugi, the voice that melts the cracks of metal to cling to sweetness, with a lively plan aimed at bewitching the stars, creation, time to unite them in an exercise that dazzles: bringing the obscenity of pain to school, teaching it life and throwing it into virgin but already wounded notes... The imaginative lanes, the expressions that are never too didactic launch the young Italian-French artist with continuity into a border that is never squared, with long uncontrollable banks. One ends up trembling, weeping, reflecting, with implants of light visiting the unexpectedness of living, its often unpretentious limbs, to enter into a gastric lavage at heart height.

One finds oneself, mistakenly, with the presumption that the entire work has dreamlike propensities: it is reality, the truths and lies of living that Gintsugi shows us, in a pentagram tuned to authenticity. We encounter modes of expression that vary, but which undoubtedly make art rock the main reference point. One cannot deny other matrices, classical and pop imprints oiled, as a guarantee of a project very broad in its intentions, even to the point of creating a resounding concept album, even though it may not have been intended. 

Right from the title (a truly exhaustive and powerful English idiomatic phrase) to continue with the touching cover image, everything is positioned, from the start, on the level of a totalising, paralysing undertaking, concluding in the state of need for continuous listening. This is not a sonic ensemble out of step with the present time, nor should the absence of din be mistaken for a clinging to older expressions. The freshness of this incredible talent lies in maturity, to turn the hourglass into a dutiful exercise in understanding so as not to waste anything that is happening.

When, in addition to her main instrument (the piano), strings are heard, small vibrations arrive in the parks of her feeling, perfectly positioning the concept of usability, continuous and incessant. Her sweetness is a sinking probe, bringing foam to the mouth to be spat out, with class, on the keys of her emotional pilgrimage, in a dynamic visit to the souls, shifting accents, dissolving twists and fears. Four singles, two instrumental tracks, a crazy cover song, would be enough to make this record stainless: it is unlikely to be scratched.

Take Lilac Wine: the splendid cover of Elkie Brooks' 1978 song about the loss of a lover with the comfort of wine made from a lilac tree reveals a portentous attention to the colours of her uvula and is sung as if that pain belonged to her, orchestrating it in a mixture of tears and hope.  It is precisely this magnetic need to face what is uncomfortable and contrary that teaches us much on a human level. Music is her first vocabulary, her nascent nerve, her growing up confronted with unrestrained suggestions, with her infinite breath, her coming together with reflections that find their voice in the notes, so that the role of communicating thoughts is not only attributed to words.

The electronics, the timpani, the drums, what seems lateral to the structure is instead an almost invisible magnet that compacts these expressive, emotional, rational cascades, which often become poignant, uncontrollable tides. One can crash in front of this ensemble, one must be prepared and very strong.

These are compositions that reveal impulses, dizziness, planning held together by a balanced bow that knows how to shoot arrows into the sky of every unpredictable need. Gintsugi is an orchestral conductor of a whole that comes at us, employing moments that are more accessible to others in which one feels thrown violently to the ground. Her idiosyncrasies are, I would easily say, summed up by a voice and mode of singing that swings, like a mystical swing, through time, having great points of reference, artists who have made the history of interpretation. Natural talents, undeniable, but consider also that in this album deep, accurate and intense studies cannot escape: everything had to smell close to perfection.

When the sounds of the uvula are absent (after having caused intense trauma), the musical part does likewise: there is no competition, but an acclimatisation in the only desired direction, which is to be not only performing but above all effective. There are moments of great brittleness (the opening Mon Coeur and Hex), only to hear the rustle of clouds caressing our hair, penetrating the skull and reaching the brain. There, thanks to these sparkling sonic earthquakes, everything becomes clay, in a feverish state. There are moments in which the tension seems close to horror, where the clouds of human happenings seem to crash and fall until they reach the belly of planet earth. Others, however, in which the songs seem like invisible, impregnable breaths, conveying colours full of life. Suffering, in this undeniable masterpiece, is not an impediment: instead, I would say an opportunity to learn, to transform blackness into a winning act. Is there space for dreams, can they be seen, pampered, experienced in these tracks? Absolutely not, and it is precisely in this aspect that the greatness of a woman who walks head-on with the wind of contrariety facing her, coming out in pieces, must be exalted: Gintsugi has a series of sweet and powerful weapons to live the present as a will and an attitude.

The Old Scribe will soon write a review on the lyrics: other miracles that make this listening a dutiful and pleasant benefit, above all instructive. In one specific track, we see the feeling emerging that she has learned to draw from a precious source: the track is To Grace, a splendid child of Tori Amos' absurd visionary abilities. Many are the frequentations of her powerful background, but none so decisive: her greatest merit is that she possesses a style of her own, intriguing, overflowing, capable of an unquestionable personal identity. Produced by herself and Andrea Liuzza's label Beautiful Losers (also featured on the album), this feathered vessel is compact, in a momentum that seems to carry behind it trails of smiling tears on a day when everything seems to be subjected to the harsh judgement of a sky full of lightning. Nine explosions with the reins, where everything can go within a film to place its destiny: such a powerful debut will be one of the wonders that will remain in the temporal sphere for the duration of infinity.

I won't write the review song by song, because you can't get inside the wind and because to see a rose bloom you can't put your fingers inside it...

The conviction remains that this is the first true masterpiece in so many years, and to keep it that way, one must be discreet: love it, listen to it, bring it into the centre of our need, but always keep a distance that is called respect, because Gintsugi deserves it more than many others...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

19 Ottobre 2023

Out on 20 October 2023

https://gintsugi.bandcamp.com/album/the-elephant-in-the-room-2

My Review: Drama Emperor - Eden’s Gardens

Drama Emperor - Eden’s Gardens

How tasty is the deception that lives segregated in history, that which slips into every mental recess, without release. There are, in art and beyond, examples that certify this malice, this unacceptable filthiness: it should be prevented that beauty has no throne visible from any latitude.

Le Marche, musically the land that has brought to light such limpid champions as Paul Chain and his Death SS, the Gang, Soviet Soviet and many others, in its fertile and golden womb has thrust into the furious musical panorama also this band, whose new release Old Scribe celebrates: a sound beam illuminated by assorted genius to generate emotions at high altitudes. Not simple, not usable with agility, to encourage, on the part of the listener, a profound work of assembly, as the duo composed of Michele Caserta and Cristiano Ballerini has been continually probing, ever since their 2009 debut, every resistance that is contrary to the programming of a precise commitment to be able to decipher the multi-magnetic waves of which they seem to be the generators blessed by the musical divinity.

They are electric vagabonds, in which the melody is a skeleton devoid of skin but functional to the motricity that makes the listening bodies magnets in mystical attraction towards a place that seems to become, episode after episode, a radioactive glade, managing to burn away the superfluous. We have had indications of this in recent years, despite the fact that the production has never been prolific: perfect, because the Marche's ambitions do not have to enter an assembly line. They sow songs like grains of sand in space: where, apparently, there seems to be a lack of meaning, everything is overturned by an effervescent, dynamic, engaging quality.

There are two new compositions that open the E.P., a pair of assaults with different modes, in style, in speed, but both imbued with wonderful metaphysical approaches. The core is a decidedly intense exploration of the provenance of their 'ancient' sonic reprisals. If one apparently denotes the abandonment of a Post-Punk matrix, in favour of insertions of electronic origin, one must however come to terms with the theatricality, a new element that seems to be a definitive stroke of genius.

In addition, one notes an orchestration that, starting from classical music, moves towards the German experimentation of the second half of the sixties: not just songs with a mantle, but notes that enter the bones. Generous sprinklings of the less orthodox eighties are especially evident in the final two pieces, with the dangerous but in this case successful system of two remixes.

The work on offer is an anvil that divides softness from chill: it is undeniable that the cables moving between the compositions are filled with a powerful capacity for investigation, to generate a fast natural selection. The powerful propensity, whether intentional or a splendid accident matters little, to absorb musical genres, to stun them, to make them objective and not dutifully recognisable, stands out. Everything lives for a few seconds with certain movements, only to be followed by others that seem to conceal the very recent past and vanish into the void. As in a stall tipped over in the mud, this is how the songs come to our listening: by putting a masterful uneasy ease, in the emotional register of an oxymoron that paralyses, conquering.

Time is now reserved for the proximity of these electrodes full of purple rust, to assign each moment our role...

Song by Song

1 - Eden's Gardens

A temporal carousel in search of a place to sow images and introspections, verifying the history of every deception: this is the temple of the greatest human lie, a garden that contemplates only pleasure, leaving the past behind. The guitar is fierce, heartbreaking, as it opposes, while the vocal part is a melancholic weeping, in which the perfect English singing places the accents on the vowels in an enchanting way. The drumming cooks the flanks and the six-string solo is a garden-variety sacrifice. The striking classical orchestration of the finale seems to paint a farewell to all illusions. Death in June, Echo & The Bunnymen, and the sound tails of Kitchens of Distinctions are placed in the first part and the enthralling refrain, in full admiration. But it is the change after the second verse that makes the whole thing elusive, sacred, definitively perfect...

2 - Pulse

No doubt: on the podium of the most interesting and atrocious songs of this dazzling 2023! Pulse is the expressive talent, the sonic investigation that starts with a killer loop, surrounded by an industrial shimmer, and then opens up as the song enters, which is a real exercise in study, resulting in a degree. The expressive theme is a cacophonic loop with a recitative that enervates, saps strength and enchants, due to its melodic leanness, inducing thought to travel in the confines of a pulsating mental labyrinth. This is the profound richness of the two artists: the smugness of complacency in writing music to pleasing effect, to project, instead, into the slow chaos of psychedelic textures and thrusts, seen through a tarnished glass, making them sound like a subtle explosion of a magma that ransacks resistance. Sublime!

3 - The Ghost In You

A Darkwave petal that frequents the hot spots of the sluttier and more sensual Coldwave, flies in this hiss that brings to mind great realities of the 1980s: Neon and Gaznevada, two excellences that loved to create to exorcise the fear of experimentation within those musical genres. Certainly dark, introverted, attractive, it makes their affinities and needs visible.

But, and I know that an extraordinary controversy will open up here, it fails to hold the gaze of the first two, because it is more mannered, less able to show the visual genius and quotas. Nothing, let's be clear, that would make the Old Scribe wish not to listen: he would have paid out of his own pocket in 1985 to hear such a composition!

4 - Awake (Soft Rior RMX)

Take Yello out to dinner, take them to the porn cinema of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and you will see how this remix is a celestial miracle: everything opens up, with continuous electronic inserts making this sonic exercise a hybrid in the direction of madness that becomes a perfect dance hall. Lively, the vocals draw dreams, while the vitaminic Synth discharges are miracles that make strobe lights blush.

5 - The Final Song (Guido Möbius RMX)

A slight ache frequents the mental space: an incipit that wanders in the dryness of a word that bangs on a shrill but extraordinary system, with a special counter-song that recalls Blixa Bargeld in a catatonic state. A sprinkling of dub and proto-house enters the song's circuit: one is constantly in neurotic anticipation...

A demonstration of how time can be put on the table in a laboratory, to design a fluid that makes eternity superfluous: the duo from the Marche has generated the astonishment that travels in the enchanted paradises of perdition, where passions and dreams are splendid corpses to be preserved.

 Italian E.P. of the year for Musicshockworld!

P.S.

Also of note is the splendid artwork by artist Francesco Pirro.

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld 

Salford

17th October 2023

https://dramaemperor.bandcamp.com/album/edens-gardens