Aktuala
La Terra

THE EARTH STILL TURNS
Just a recollection.
If you want a "real" review, turn the page.

FLASHBACK
As soon as "La Terra" starts spinning, I find myself near a large tent, hidden among the dense vegetation on the riverbanks.
I am about sixteen years old: very long hair, an embarrassingly naive freak look, the inevitable, anxious rush to grow up, and a hungry gaze at the world.
But what surprises me the most is the scents: that of the tall grass, revived by a summer storm, mixing with the inescapable whiffs of Patchouli. Scents of the early '70s, like the intense and acrid smell of raw leather bags, the customary accessory of young subalpine versions of a youth who, years earlier, had dreamed a lysergic and beat dream.
An even more intense and primitive smell emanates from the bongos, moistened to stretch the skins before the exhausting attempts of some makeshift percussionist, which will echo in the silence of the peaceful valley.
We are a pack of teenagers tackling a vain representation of freedom as otherness. And engaged in goofy attempts to reproduce what we imagine to be the "alternative" way to the age of "reason."
Inside those tents, improbable promiscuities under the banner of free love will take place: clumsy orgies among the smoke of local grass and the French anise aroma of overused Pastis.
And endless discussions, visions of possible future scenarios, words generated by desires that allow no hesitation or waits.
A little further, in a clearing among the trees, in a few days, a stage will be set up to host uninterrupted jam sessions open to everyone.
I still don't know that some of those older "types" than us, who seem to spread through their instruments, in a mysterious crossing of glances, the nervous sounds of nature much more "wild" than ours, would become well-known names in the jazz scene. I listen to them as one listens to an unknown language.
Because they are a part of the whole, part of a constant flow of sensations.

But the images overlap and cancel out, crossfades and gaps in memory.
Ah, yes, the Aktuala…
There's this album, "La Terra," sometimes an LP, in some attic or in an apartment free from the presence of parents and turned into a branch of wild camping. More often it's a cassette: in the car, at the station kiosk, in the woods…
And there's the extraordinary feeling that this music without words is in absolute harmony with us, with that longing for elsewhere that crosses us. Long tracks of apparent anarchy, journeys made in the wake of sounds from instruments you've rarely or never heard, and never together, never so "free" and close to your spirit in search of another "space" to roam.
They seem in harmony even with the scents, with that mix of natural musk and oriental perfumes, with the sunny "smoky" rituals and with the nighttime incense.
And they are definitely in tune with the magic of that sky thrown open above our heads like a riddle studded with stars.

UNINTENTIONAL GIFTS AND ATTEMPTS OF OBLIVION
You then bought the album, you almost wore it out, when lending it to a friend turned it into an unintentional gift.
But time swallows everything.
And you forget.
Or you think you forget.
And without almost realizing it, you become someone else: in a handful of years the naive freak has dissolved, without leaving apparent traces. And if any had surfaced, you were quick to erase them.

It's adulthood, mon ami: sometimes you become the killer of a part of yourself. And you even rule your own "impunity."
But, other times, maybe thirty years later, just retrieving the CD reissue of Aktuala's second album (LP Bla bla '74-CD Artis '92) is enough to be transported, through a time gateway, near a tent hidden among the thick vegetation on the riverbanks.
Where you get the chance to observe your very young ghost, an innocent freak stumbling and picking himself up while stubbornly matching his thirst for experiences, feeling everything with an intensity you can't even remember today.

I know, it's an exercise in lousy sentimental writing.
But it's also the exact description of what happened to me listening again, last night, after such a long time, to "La Terra."
An album I unequivocally recommend to the many young DeBaser users traveling among the less predictable sounds of Italian music of the '70s, among the early Battiato, Area, and Perigeo, for example. And also to those who broaden their explorations in the same years to the "doors of the cosmos" or to the psychedelic sound that met the East.
And since this, along with Aktuala's first self-titled album, is also one of those that have crossed time best without suffering its affronts, by virtue of great artistic skill and a spirit ahead of the future of certain sounds (practically one of the first examples of true world music), I also wrote a little page where I attempt to describe it succinctly, providing further details that I hope will be useful.
If you want to read it click here.
But if you want to trust that naive freak, take a ride on "La Terra."
And bon voyage.