Acustimantico
Santa Isabel

At the beginning, there's a path, sparse, drawn in pencil. There are no signs, no directions. Each instrument takes its own path. Immerses itself in its own tone. Yet the effect is anything but disharmonious. Only, you have the impression that the road leads further away, beyond, rather than home, as (perhaps misleadingly) the first title of the batch suggests. Beyond physical directions, in a sense. Of which you're not sure. If the roads were straight and not spiral... If you took any road without hesitation... If uncertainty had a beginning and had an end... If, if.

We could talk about what these sounds do. If someone encloses them in boxes, genres, categories. Jazz. Folk. Popular music. Singer-songwriter music. Experimentation. World music. Those things, words good only to serve as tags. By convention. To find them. Once you've found them, the Acustimantico, the world and the way you have in front of you are something else. Imaginary music, intangible, as they explain and don't explain in a sort of statement of intent, which perhaps is not. There is always something beyond what is said in this record. There are undoubtedly stories, sometimes naïve paintings, sometimes the simple flow of impressions. There's the heaviness of political struggle, lightened by art, by elegant metaphor, by poetry. Neruda, Lorca, Dino Campana, Pasolini, and Homer meet in the taverns of Alda Merini, and discuss revolution in front of Baudelaire's absinthe, among frenzied violins and swooning saxophones. What can come out of it? It's not music for slogans, that's for sure. It's asocial music, sometimes even sociophobic. It's music for those variable fragments of the day you spend in solitude. That's how you must have felt, one can easily imagine, down in the dark hold that saw Emanuel Carnevali, poet and emigrant, meditate. Stories from the early century, that other one, mingled in the dark, dull sound of a ship's horn.

There are other things, too. "The Song of Balance" seems like an Aesop's fable, irresistible in its sparse, floating arrangement. In its premise and conclusion: Yin and Yang, like that. Every possible medal, for balance, reveals a different side. With "Half Song" and "Consequences of a Name", it even veers into the nearly metaphysical. Music and words of intrinsic beauty, art for art's sake. No precise story, no context, no where, just the atemporal suspension of a feeling or whatever it is. Then poured into words, into the best and strangest notes to say it. And there is still time, among the spaces, for the surreal diversion of "Mouse Tail". It is a scandal of language / to say 'mouse' in a love song / but then what to say, what to say... a way of genius and irony that lifts, to grasp the nonsense of love pretending to be eternal, and instead.

Then, then it ends far away. In the end, only sounds remain, unconnected but harmonious. Strange but beautiful. And the distance, nothing more. One wonders if it's not just that between two people: no man will be an island, as one said - but, perhaps, almost. But, as much as distances hurt, this is a nice journey, toward a Santa Isabel just mentioned. Go figure which one it is, among the many - but surely it goes south, toward the less rich America, towards a destiny of solitude, less overwhelming and romantic than that caressed by Márquez, but no less fascinating.

Acustimantico prefer quality over quantity. They tour (they toured, until some time ago, presumably they still do, but I've somewhat lost track of them) playing in the capital, in the most unexpected places. In outdoor parks, in theaters. Often acoustically, as their chosen name evokes. Which, if you notice - yes, they did notice - is none other than the anagram of Canta, scuotimi!

They have been around for twelve years. They have an EP, two albums, a live, and a theatrical show to their credit. They are all frighteningly talented musicians, including the voice (female: the splendid Raffaella Misiti). Most importantly, they have an enviable ability to find the right notes. (Why play all these notes when we can just play the best ones? As one said.)

Honestly, I don't know where they are and what they are doing, but I hope to find traces of them soon.

When death comes knocking / At a door, for balance / When death comes knocking / For balance it should feel / A doubt of love.

(From The Song of Balance. Indeed.)