Colloquio
Si Muove e Ride

Spring is advancing and begins to offer the first days of genuine sunshine after a sad and rainy winter, while hormones are already knocking at the door and becoming hard to contain.

With the untimeliness that distinguishes me, I am, however, bringing to your attention the disheartening poetry of Bolognese singer-songwriter Gianni Pedretti, who delivers intimate and nocturnal atmospheres, ideal for solitary listening in the quiet of dark and gloomy evenings.

One can certainly not say that Pedretti is an artist who loves the spotlight: a now-cult figure in our underground scene, in about three decades he has managed to deliver only three albums, not counting a series of hard-to-find recordings, including "Il Giardino delle Lacrime" (1993), "Inferno" (1994), "Le Dolci Carezze della Tristezza" (1994), and "Lettere a una Tessitrice d'Ombra" (1995).

"Io e l'Altro" (1995), "Va Tutto Bene" (2001), and "Si Muove e Ride" (2007) are the official albums that make up the concise discography of Colloquio, his main project.

A humble and solitary artist, Pedretti does not like to make headlines, his albums are released causing as little fuss as possible, and if today his name enjoys a certain notoriety, it is because the Emilian singer has recently lent his voice to Neronoia, whose two albums ("Un Mondo in Me" and "Il Rumore delle Cose") have achieved moderate success.

"Si Muove e Ride" does not disappoint expectations and follows the good work done with the previous albums; an album that, in truth, is not particularly recommended to anyone: Colloquio's proposal, excessively cloying and redundant for dark-wave lovers, intrinsically difficult to be approached by any light music enthusiast, rather recalls a liquefied Paolo Conte flattened in a gray pool of resignation, or an illiterate Franco Battiato grappling with an improbable diary pervaded by the gloomy images of a derelict and lightless daily life.

Pedretti (voice, piano, and synths) is assisted on this occasion by Sergio Calzoni (synths, loops, sound design), a competent and refined musician, as well as the mind of Italian Act Noir. And it is to Calzoni that we owe the good success of an album that can boast clear and essential sounds, suspended between subtle ambient and elegant electronic from the author, without disdaining moments of subtle noise (the restless buzzing of a fly, also the protagonist of the cover, is the leitmotif that will accompany us, at alternating stages, for the fifty-minute duration of the album).

Pedretti's piano draws sparse melodies, sliding over Calzoni's soft ambient carpets, while the guitars of Stefano Nieri (also from Act Noir) and Stefano Castrucci are called upon to refine the whole, both used with effective parsimony: a minimal and less indulgent sound, therefore, in which the compositions evolve through small and imperceptible steps, often reiterating the same themes, gradually enriched by new harmonic insights.

Pedretti's narrating voice, his warm and deep timbre, sketches an entire inner world with dense brushstrokes: a world made of memories, shattered hopes, a sense of irreparable loss. The bitter contemplation flows into an intimate melancholy, difficult to grasp given the highly autobiographical content of the lyrics: suspended and enigmatic phrases, simple observations, a poetic of the everyday that never becomes a lyrical surge and drama, but a caption of a gallery of portraits, memories, reminiscences dragged by the relentless flow of time and reread with powerless sharpness years later, in a room with peeling walls, sitting on a chair in front of the screen of a mental television, while nervously extinguishing cigarette butts in ashtrays scattered over the shabby furniture.

The compositions tend to resemble each other, Pedretti's minimal recitation does not help, and at first, one might perceive a monotony and a poverty of content that only successive listens will be able to dissipate.

After all, "Si Muove e Ride" is not an album for everyone, and even less is it an album to listen to distractedly: the strength of Colloquio's last fundamental work lies in the nuances, which can only be caught after several attempts. Listen after listen, not only will new details have a chance to emerge, but the same compositions will shed their presumed banality to acquire identity, meaning, depth.

Only in their final stages do the pieces seem to open up to musicality that is more accessible to the ears of others. As happens in the acoustic tails of "Nel domani" and the title track, while "Fra queste mura," masterpiece within masterpiece, boasts an even noise finale.

There's no point in dwelling on individual episodes, the album bears the credentials of a single discourse that the Emilian singer-songwriter has with himself: a walk through the gray alleys of a city of the soul, with hands in pockets and the instinct to avoid, even in distraction, the puddles that form along the pavement, while men, women, people, cars pass by without disturbing our thoughts, turned to a past that does not return, to a present that does not exist, to a future that one would like already ended...    

"There's a man who cries in secret

for a shred of life that deceived him.

No answer in his past

waiting for even the future to pass quickly.

How many goodbyes closed in his hands

hidden somewhere of tomorrow.

Leaving a smile in the mirror

not to feel alone, not to feel old."