Windhand music returns to the starting point with perpetual motion, to restart each time from where it had apparently ended. A cyclic music that flows ineluctable, in slow motion, dragging itself with heavy pace. There is no tragic nature or theatricality in their resignation. Only indolence, exhaustion and awareness of one's inability to change the natural flow of events. A compliant passivity towards the passing of time that "elevates" the fourth record of the Virginia band to ... read more

In the early 70s Superstudio (an atelier of young architects based in Florence) imagined and designed Twelve Ideal Cities, a dystopian vision in which modern urbanization reached the most surreal and alienating levels. Calibro 35 spaceship now lands in these interweaving of geometric sci-fi structures. After taking off from the foggy slums of Milan in the 70s, and after having gone on an intergalactic journey with their 2015 album (S.P.A.C.E.), their spacecraft reaches this new metropolis, ... read more

I woke up in the middle of the night. Shaken by the creeps of a nightmare from which I cannot free myself. Still too many hours before dawn. I choose The Miraculous as soundtrack for my sleepless waiting. Pipe organ carpets and abyssal synthesizers dilate the flow of the hands, and the tolls of the clock seem to warp among dissonant melodies. It is like wandering in a house uninhabited for years. I have a sadistic attraction for darkness, but this time I have several times the temptation to ... read more

When we think about personal and intimate music, performed only by guitar and voice, we don’t think about psychedelic spirals stretched like ivy on walls of drones neither of distortions that wear themselves out and retie themselves in dark mazes generated by a ghostly voice. This is not exactly the traditional, usual, idea of intimacy. Fortunately there are some musicians - like Lili Refrain - that ignore “tradition” concept, conducting the listener to unusual paths without ... read more

Poland is one of the bastions of the Catholic religion, which in this nation has a very high specific weight from both a social and a political point of view. There could be no more fertile ground than this for the birth and development of Behemoth, one of the most explicit bands in expressing their reaction to the power of the Church. To do this, their leader (Adam Michał "Nergal" Darski) has used the same weapons as his "enemy", namely a constantly and growing attempt to ... read more

Music for those who leave. Silently, slowly, without clamour. Lights go out and time expands in a continuous flow, no longer forced into the obsessive rhythms of the real world. Spirit of Eden is a bubble floating beyond the time of its conception and moving freely, beyond any known route (with the only exception, in those years, of David Sylvian). “Create a home within my head”. The outside world doesn't exist anymore, in the 11 months that Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene ... read more

In a world split into two opposing blocs, where hopes are lukewarm rays of lights submerged in the fog, Bowie creates a dreamlike, decadent album which is both a mirror of its time and a reflex of the innermost world of its author.
While in London punk is corroding rock music to bring it back to its raw, primordial essence, free of all the baroque mannerism of the early 70s, in West Berlin David Bowie is digging a personal tunnel beyond the trends of those years and succeeds in combining ... read more

I knew Low one summer evening in 2003, in Piazzale Michelangelo in Florence. They played as support band for Radiohead, and behind them there was an amazing view of the town from up above the hill, with the curves of Arno sliding between monuments. The delicate, fragile and romantic music of the American band puzzled most of the audience, who was waiting for the generational anthems of Karma Police, Creep and High and Dry, not realizing that Radiohead, on tour to promote Hail to the Thief, were ... read more

Siamese Dream is a strange example of external pressure capable to develop the creativity of an artist. Grunge rock explosion and debut album potential convinced Virgin to claim a hit record, from the second Smashing Pumpkins album. The band risked to destroy itself but the result was a wonderful rock album, perfect to launch Pumpkins in the lap of alternative rock gods. Billy Corgan emphasized melodic research and combined it with a ton of fuzz and distortion, balancing tenderness with ... read more

A few nights ago I found myself looking for a music that would accompany the floating feeling between gloomy nostalgia and fragile hope that had stuck on me. I go over my vinyls with a fine tooth comb, with a precise idea of what I wanted to feel, but without having the slightest idea of who could transmit it to me. I put on the turntable Wear Your Wounds debut album - a project through which Jacob Bannon explores his shadowy and romantic side, halfway between post rock and darkwave. Mindful of ... read more

Nowhere is a place floating on a wave, in undulant movement between noise and melody. Son of 60s psychedelic use of dissonance and 80s post punk romantic atmospheres, Nowhere is a psychedelic lollipop drenched in noises. The Jesus and Mary Chain dichotomy between disturbing deviance and pure sweetness is here synthesized in a delicate space pop. Dynamic but dazing too, Ride music is not so hazy as My Bloody Valentine one, despite the evident similarity with it. The tide of liquid guitar effects ... read more

Indolence got the power. J Mascis lazy voice and his loose relaxed guitar come out of the college radio circuit exactly when the grunge phenomenon (of which J had been one of the fundamental inspirations behind), breaks down the barrier of separation between underground and mainstream music. Yet it is not thanks to the reflected glory that the band signs for a major and gathers the attention of a big audience. The credit for this success lays on Mascis capability to represent with sincerity a ... read more

"Feed your head!” The pills Grace Slick presents to Jefferson Airplane when she joins the band in the fall of 1966 (and that open the doors of the psychedelic experience and of a new vision of the world to an entire generation) are more important than the two masterpieces Somebody to Love and White Rabbit. The singer brings electric energy and sense of freedom, erotic appeal and fantasy. She owns the seeds of Summer of Love that the band uses - with creativity - to integrate its ... read more

First session of a cycle of psychoanalysis. Close your eyes, relax your muscles and begin to release your breath, too long held. Guitar sonic waves go back and forth on the shore, while a fragile, vulnerable, neurotic voice leaves deep marks on the sand (10:56). Soon every barrier disappears, and the emotional storm explodes, right into the face. Ultra-violent post hardcore outbursts, almost close to post black metal shores explored by Deafheaven. The second session of therapy (Second Son of ... read more

How was it possible to conceive such an incredible thrash metal album out of the 80s? You need a spaceship capable of traveling at a speed such as to bend space - time, projecting itself both into the golden age of skinny jeans, basketball sneakers and fringes and into a still unknown future. It is clear that Vektor own such a spaceship and it is parked in their rehearsal room: otherwise you would not be able to think of an album such as Terminal Redux is. Pure progressive thrash metal. And ... read more

Showing yourself, without hiding inside a cloud of noise, is an act of courage. As well as travelling by yourself through the darkest streets of American folk, crossed over time by men in black, now legends of the American rock. But courage is an attribute that is not lacking in Chelsea Wolfe. So, with her ethereal voice protected exclusively by the acoustic guitar and supported only by suffused arrangements, she advances along an intimate and personal Route 66, which has got the universal as ... read more

I turned up the volume, up to the point I thought the room would be saturated. But the depth of the sound layers of Hiss Spun is so high that you never see the bottom. I moved to the other side of the house. Diverted from the walls and channeled through the doors, Chelsea Wolfe voice seemed to come from another dimension. To develop itself, music needs space. Especially when its composers claim a physical and mental immersion in it. With the help of Kurt Ballou and Ben Chisholm, Chelsea Wolfe ... read more

After a period of proud isolation during which they had abandoned the atmospheric explorations of their black metal in favour of a psychedelic ambient so deeply immersed in the depths of the Cosmos as far away from those ones of the Man, Weaver brothers compose a work that finds its strength in the spirit of the human community and in its ancient myths. Thrice Woven awakes black metal outbursts of the past, but at the same time it enriches them with atmospheres which are conceivable only for ... read more

There are albums born to be played at maximum volume. It is thanks to the distortions - so fat as to saturate the air - as well to the riffs repeating themselves endlessly, supporting themselves on cadenced, sturdy rhythmic. Sometimes so dreamlike as the one of a shoegaze band, sometimes weary, exhausted, hallucinated as Alice in Chains one, from the sonic magma a female voice appears and we understand that the high volume not only increases the unleashed power, yet it enhances also the daze. ... read more

Published two years after Oceanic, Panopticon is closer to post rock and psychedelic atmospheres than to sludge metal, despite some suffocating heavy explosions. Panopticon is ethereal, dreamlike, surreal. A glass window of a plane, transparent and cold, on which rays of sunlight reflect themselves. It evocates big spaces, with nostalgia. It doesn’t tell about imprisonment and control, it tells about a sense of lost freedom that pervades us, a sense of impotence, and the increasing ... read more