Antonio Pignatiello
Ricomincio da qui

We are in the early days of spring that precede and somewhat anticipate a warm season; we are overwhelmed by the quantity, and thus we are forced to sniff: we chase scents, shuttling back and forth like Bloodhounds, going around in circles when we lose the trail, and then that aroma we were seeking returns, with heads held high, back and forth across a land overflowing with things, there it appears, we have finally found what we were looking for.

It's called "Ricomincio da qui" (Controrecords), the new album by Antonio Pignatiello. It’s a beautiful chamber album. Many songs encapsulate a bit of what has also been the personal journey of this artist, who confesses: "Fortune scheduled our meeting at midnight, in a Parisian café. The conversation lasted about three hours. The lady dined on a sandwich and drank a warm beer. It was almost dawn when I was able to escort her back to the station.”

Irony and surrealism are mixed, warmth and pathos. Special guests also appear on this album: poet and land-artist Franco Arminio and Pasquale Innarella, who collaborated with Pignatiello and Giuliano Valori on the arrangement compositions.

Two covers are added to these tracks: "Parigi" by Paolo Conte, and "Tu No" by Piero Ciampi.

The album officially opens with "Folle," a bright, almost unusual track, but truly very pleasant, 'I composed it at night. I got up, recorded it and then went back to sleep. – He adds – It has a more immediate structure compared to the other things I compose’. The presence of the piano is strong, while the lyrics deserve to be quoted, and "When sleep doesn't come, when time makes no sense, when even the last glass is now empty…” The text is really very interesting. Next is "Non Torna," which brings us back to Mediterranean atmospheres complete with the Banda di Lacedonia and Greece "There is a lost fate, at the port intersection, with your face inside, hidden in Livorno.” And while the music proceeds in a crescendo, the message comes through loud and clear, explicit: "Everything else doesn't come back and won't return, everything else passes and returns but doesn't pass through here."

Then there is "Cosa resta?", because "We wait inside suitcases for hours, in anticipation of a better journey, without a station, without a ticket, without a place to go, little remains of you"; imperceptibly we find ourselves in France with 'Camere Separate a Paris' and "Parigi," while "all around is only rain and France."

We thus reach "Viali della Verità," a poem accompanied by Giuliano Valori's piano, walking along the seashore, returning under the soft light of bedside lamps in the enchantment of his most intimate songs, passing through a moment of reflection with "25 anni dopo" with Franco Arminio to recount the 1980 earthquake in Irpinia.

Also worth mentioning is 'Amori Clandestini' inspired by 'Altri Libertini' by Pier Vittorio Tondelli, "Ricomincio da tre" a clear homage to Massimo Troisi; a special place is reserved for the two 'Ninna Nanna' resulting from linguistic and historical research that the author himself carried out between Irpinia and Puglia. The album closes with a ghost track titled "Si sta facendo sempre più tardi" inspired by Antonio Tabucchi's book of the same title.

Finally, after so much sniffing, we can come home happy to have found a work of art by a young artist who, after this fine work, will already have to think about maintaining the high level achieved, a difficult endeavor but not impossible for Antonio Pignatiello who seems to care little for the laws imposed by the record market that tend to standardize everything and everyone.

Inside Pignatiello's songs there is humility and purity, therefore, and there is anxiety and research; there is the desire to continue moving forward, to continuously take a position by assuming one's responsibilities without ever bending, because when there is quality, one advances by far, despite those commercial products packaged like nauseatingly smelling tuna.

Enjoy the music!