Ardecore
Chimera

Rome. The sun is high over the murky and still river, almost scrutinizing you with its slow flow. It calls to you, hypnotizes you silently. Far in the distance, the musical calls of 'Chimera' by Ardecore reflect like water on the eternal walls of Rome, on the banks of the blonde river, on the ramshackle boats, on two passersby, a man and a woman, who walk distantly through the forgotten alleys. She knew she shouldn't have taken out this record if her crush on the first of the Roman ensemble hadn't yet passed, and instead, she goes her own way, as always, and it floods her heart like the sight of this utterly silent river...

The formula is always the same: splatters of love, rage, and violent, passionate poetry lost among jazz, folk, songwriter music, stornelli, Roman dialect, and mandolins, tainted, this time, with a veil of 'electricity' that gently covers everything in modernity.

If in 'Ardecore', the first album by the capital's band, there was an homage to Rome, to its folk song, to its darker and lonelier black soul, in 'Chimera', there's much more than Rome: there's all our local tradition and culture that vibrates. A story made of passion in verses, of stubbornness in feelings, of greatness of ardors and impulses, filled with deceit and resignation; recovered thanks to their particular musical sensitivity and placed on an imaginary bridge connecting the old folk-musical tradition with the entirely personal originality of modern arrangements. A bitter and brilliant tale by Giampaolo Felici's Ardecore, which, with the Zu band, guitarist Geoff Farina (leader of the American Karate band), and new additional elements, guides us through the torments of heart and soul, revealing themselves for the first time, even with original compositions, using a mix of delicacy and aggressiveness that alone explains and paints the human soul, managing to reach and scrape the very bottom of that black well which is the heart of every pulsating identity. This by handling, with gloves of very vivid words, not only the themes of love and dear affections but also the thornier ones of marginalization, tragedy ('Nessuno') and emigration ('Miniera', 'Chimera'); perfectly representing, as they themselves explain, 'the vain dream of those who try to reach something by sacrificing all they possess'. And perhaps this is precisely the path that the album and its company of players intend to explore: that of delving deep into human existence made of choices and renunciations with the grace of arrangements, the intensity of words, the beauty of music, stirring long-forgotten emotions and challenging the laws of this contemporary world of uncertain tastes.

The styles and genres thus converge together, blending and fusing homogeneously, allowing for a journey between old traditional songs from the late eighteen hundreds ('M'affaccio Alla Finestra'), revisited in a dramatically blues-folk fashion; to 'new stories' like 'Parole Controvento', splendid in its blend of bass xylophone and trumpet or like the sarcastic and very bitter 'Buon Natale' with an almost Waitsian flavor. From the drunken band march of 'Quel Ritmo Americano', accelerated and tainted for the occasion, to reinterpretations, (musicated and rewritten by Felici), of popular oral tradition songs: 'Beatrice' and 'Nessuno', transformed into true lamentations of broken hearts between woeful violas and violins. From the poignant melodrama 'Sinnò Me Moro' in a tragically dark tango-noir version to that final little gem of 'one's own production' 'Chi sà Perché?' which, like the little tunes of 1930s jazz orchestras, like the tunes of old music boxes, like everything you'd never imagine, on those swung piano and double bass notes, slides over you playing at making you lose your balance, clouding your sight like the wine you sip now.

These Roman storytellers both obscure and illuminate, doing so by giving us evocative atmospheres of other times, of other places, with new arrangements, strong, direct, beautiful words and a unique style. Violins, cellos, trombones, mandolins, and accordions in an exceptional choral excellence that almost touches perfection, touching you inside as only songwriter's music, popular music, and street music fused together can.

The song of Ardecore can be heard far away, engaging and capturing. The two passersby don't know what it was. Perhaps a moment, perhaps a gust of wind that brought them a 'chimera'. Silence though, as certain emotions must not be disturbed. Now just this burning song that continues to blaze in the air..