Posts Tagged ‘recensione’

runes order - the hopeless day
runes order – the hopeless day

The Runes Order, aka Claudio Dondo, this demanding and ambitious chapter of its saga takes advantage of the valuable collaboration of Trevor (Northgate and Camerata Mediolanense) and the result, The Hopeless Day, may easily be defined as a pearl in dark-cold-electronic context. Electronic rides, analogic carpets and dark patterns properly sampled with the inevitable cinematographic touch, that is justified by Dondo’s passion for cult-horror cinema.

Despite being massively present, technology does not seem to belong to this experience: the whole disc wrapped around me a strange sense of pleasant retro and masochistic sadness, like a long and exceeded regret refusing the current realities.

Almost fully instrumental, The Hopeless Day, draws myriad of origami and listening to every nuance it seems to show a different layer of its skin, which in a fair and tenacious way tries to resist to the lashing that the modern era’s reserves, ruthlessly.

The Runes Order travel in a parallel dimension, suspended without a clear identity, harmonic and negative, where electronic dominates but don’t sum, demeans or simplify the whole concept, indeed, it traces tortuous and agonizing paths.

After each listening, you may find yourself facing a forgotten or never explored street, superficially omitted, as if a serial killer waiting for you just around the corner at the bottom of the road, with you completely wondering.

The track list presents After The Passing, a cover by Malombra masterfully performed by Daniela Bedeski (member of  Camerata), real icing on the cake of this album in which cold, horror, retro, nihilistic and apocalyptic atmospheres stand out. It’s hard to summarize with a few words, but extremely fascinating to try, as the expectation of a new detector listening.

Make your own this gem, listen to it in the dark… looking over your shoulder.

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My Dying Bride - Evinta

My Dying Bride - Evinta

Evinta is not technically a new My Dying Bride album, but rather a collection of new compositions, a kind of symphonic-orchestral reinterpretation of all that the British band conceived and realized in the last 20 years.

The final result, however, can also induce the keenest fan to be in front of an unpublished work: no more guitars to weave heavy, claustrophobic and doom atmosphere, no more screaming vocals, but piano, violins and keyboards to lead the listener in a gothic and dramatic journey, taken in hand by Aaron theatrical and sententious vocalise. The presence of a female voice (the french mezzo-soprano Lucie Roche) does not seem to reassure but rather embark us on a dreamlike dimension outside the musical context.

Maybe someone might perceive the lack of inspiration of the band, but after all the experiment raises curiosity and the charm and elegance of some compositions is undeniable.

Suitable for the end credits of a tragic noir gothic film, at times appears to be close to less experimental Elend , in others (Lilies Of Bent With Tears, especially) easily assimilable to Arcana, but all the work deserves to be heard until the end despite the palpable danger of getting tired, just carried by a feeling of vanity’s sake.

The Distance, Busy With Shadows is one of the best episodes of this intense and pretentious work while the final A Hand Of Awful Rewards is a gem that turns heads and hopes, where even the least sensitive of us is likely to shed tears.

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Ulver - War of the Roses
Ulver – War of the Roses

I admit to being a great admirer of Ulver’s changes, I have followed the “Norwegian wolves” since the beginning of their never linear musical journey, always surprising and unsettling, so as to label them (what an ugly word …) as the cutting edge of an extreme music scene so bleak as the present one. I’m one of the lucky few who have seen them in both their two Italian concerts and if last year I came back excited by their live performance at Rasi theater, a few weeks ago I was rather puzzled by their show at Bronson, in Ravenna again.

First I had the proof that a band like that is to listen sitting back and letting the mind and the images resulting from their music to travel free and undisturbed, without any kind of distractions due to standing up or the inability to remain enveloped in the visual projections so dear to our scandinavian. Then disappointment, is the dominant feeling in hearing live this War of the Roses enhanced by the revival of just one old song (Hallways of Always). Backing home, comforted by the wonderful just purchased Ulver T-shirt , I tried a more carefully second listening without finding the expected satisfaction. The former Shadow of the Sun once more had my ears blown away, slipping into a gentle and resigned intimacy leaving very pleasant background sensations, one thing is certain: with every album, Ulver, taught me not to live with old memories and the fact of never knowing what to expect, a sort of excitement that only the unknown can give, is what I always liked about Kristoffer Rygg‘s band.
Album production is by John Fryer (Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins, Swans), then a guarantee, but the opening February MMX has the feel of a song already heard, something like Lost in Moments lost oll gasp, but most of all (worst to me) feels like an episode completely detached from the rest of the disc: a “filler” track more than the single that launched the album on Facebook. Listening to Norwegian Gothic brings back the good mood: the track is not linear, noir, bizarre, and his distortions are so nice to merit more than a play. The intimacy of Providence wakes for a moment the atmosphere of Shadow of the Sun and the female voice is a sweet caress, September IV has a gait that you immediately appreciate, but only in the second part it shows off its best part. England has the thickness of a piece of interim but Island is an avant-garde gem that finally lets me back nicely displaced and takes me Blood Inside strong and mixed emotions. The voice of Daniel O’Sullivan reigns in the final”suite”, the minimal and sacral Stone Angels, a song that almost moved me in the live performance, but heard in the album contest and despite a really thrilling final, results a bit bulky with its 15 minutes out of 45 total.
I will always love Ulver, that’s for sure, but I cannot mask my disappointment, and despite the merit that (maybe) will have to launch the band to a slice of the broader public, in my modest opinion”War of the Roses” signs a small step back from my feverish expectations.
the dominant feeling in listening to the new live album

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