Babalot
Un Segno Di Vita

Babalot has created the antidisc.

After the technicolor of 'Che Succede Quando Uno Muore', he smoothly transitions to a more chiaroscuro black and white. And he makes the antidisc. To give a vague idea: despite the back of the album indicating the presence of 15 tracks, there are actually 27. For a total of 12 ghost-tracks or similar (including a remix and two extremely lo-fi live performances). After a while, you start to think that the real album is the hidden one. After a bit more, you simply think they didn’t write all the titles because they wouldn't fit. And then you just don't care: it's Babalot.

27 songs, therefore, for a total of 54 minutes: the math is simple and disarming. An antidisc fragmented, proceeding in fits and starts, always alternating and overlapping rustic-acoustic domestic guitars with a rusty and dusty flavor to electronic inserts that always have a slightly playmobil and plastic feel. The antidisc bounces, stops, spins, and Babalot sings over it with that laid-back voice about daily hassles with an admirable mixture of disillusionment and prosaic poetry. In the undeclared part of the album Babalot, in flashes of lucidity, gives some showcases of his mad art (Consumo, Prima Dopo, Urgenza).

But it's the first part that, beyond conceptual reconstructions, stays in your head: Spillatrice is a striking opener, with electric guitars and drums racing through a minute and a half of straightforward pop-rock; Tutte Le Ragioni is the best thing on the album, with absurd leaps between acoustic guitar and rough electronic breakdowns with crazy beats (and a, once again, delightful text); Vuoto, with that cascade of organetto, lodges in your head and won't come out; Antifurto, where it sounds like the house is playing, with the sink, the lawnmower, the fridge, the boiler; Diavolo, which in a minute goes from techno to folk; Smontavo Tutto, in which the second memorable verse is squeezed into ten seconds of disco-punk delirium. In short: every song deserves a mention. And yet. The frenetic pace at which Babalot forces the listener risks being overwhelmingly intense. Sure, the idea of losing all coordinates, always disorienting, breaking the tracks, stopping them when they seem set to start, or making only vague retches emerge (Dissociazione), is extraordinary, but the exercise, prolonged too much, leads to some avoidable virtuosity (magnificently avoided in the first album).

And then, let's face it: Babalot's plastic world would be quite understandable in its reconstructed artificiality even with a slightly less rough handling of the sounds. A sign of life, for sure. We await Babalot to come out of his ultra-experimental seclusion made of washing machines and water heaters and, after a great antidisc, give us a great album.