Blur
13

THE REVIEW

13 stages of a journey, 13 bounces between earth-sky, sky-space... "Tender" opens the journey in a completely normal way without any strange eccentricities, "Burgman" is the true beginning of the trip... it starts with an annoying pinch, becomes a punch in the stomach, evolves into a gigantic insect that wants to enter your ear and buzzes, buzzes, and ends with a chainsaw that opens your skull... but there is a world made of normality and tranquility, made of "Coffee and TV"; sure, it's classic and monotonous, but it's essential to relax us before the next stage: "Swamp Song", made of "off-key" sounds and madness ready to surround you with "give me", screams and hysterical laughter... and then feeling like you're on a flying carpet that lets you fly high and slowly descends toward the ground, feeling so much wind on your face and the taste of the approaching earth making you rub your eyes ("1992"); and the pleasant dive into a frenetic and fast world where madness reigns again; and that robotic voice that follows you during the crash and repeats "BLUREMI"... after the impact there is darkness... feeling lost in a creepy space littered only with pseudo-probes, a voice as scary as unbalanced, alien but somewhat familiar beeps, a continuous and menacing beat... this is "Battle". Open your eyes and relax on a melodic cradle, landing on a "Tender Song", an almost spiritual journey of total rest... and a visit to the quiet "Trailerpark" is like stopping in a futuristic pub, and it can only do well to prepare for a flight in a cold night with closed eyes: with your feet on the ground, low, then higher, and even higher until the sudden brake just below the sky's carpet that, for just an instant, lets you look at the small and dark world beneath your wings; and then set off again until you arrive up there, where some angelic voice welcomes you in a sky of "Caramel."

"Trimm Trab" is the return journey: slowly back to earth... even on this journey, after a reflective pause, we have time to coordinate, get into position and then set off again with more power until we land once more. And we realize that we're at the penultimate stage, we realize that "There is no distance left to run", and so we prepare for the last calm and solitary walk on earth... and now one last slow flight back up to space, beyond the sky, beyond the clouds, beyond the atmosphere to observe the small sphere called "Earth" directly from "Optigan 1"...

13 is this: a journey on a round and distorted universe, a puzzle that has been completed but with pieces placed randomly, yet it takes on an undefined but equally unique form and, for this reason, fascinating; it is a leap toward something without boundaries, it is bouncing on a soft wall, it is a powerful whisper in your ears...