Consorzio Suonatori Indipendenti
Linea Gotica

The density of darkness and the unpredictable duration of horror. This is the thematic profile that surrounds the entire second work of the C.S.I. project; a record that disrupts the organic nature of harmonic lines and shuffles the coherence of the entire structural design of the first work (and unbeatable, perhaps on an expressive level) "Ko De Mondo".

Necessarily controversial and tortuous, the path of "Linea Gotica" attempts to mimic the madness of a tortured, oppressed, suffering world. Suspended between Mannerism and Expressionism in figurative terms, this deliberately ungraceful work cannot concede much to the idea of "Beauty" in a neo-classical sense, without dulling its own representative and evocative power. In a certain sense, "Linea Gotica" is situated in a historical and meta-historical moment preceding "Ko De Mondo": in that wonderful mix of esoteric-autobiographical post-punk lay the universalistic meaning of a possible rebirth through the reparative acknowledgment of the already exploded seismic shocks of history. In this second act, the compositions chase the disquieting lights of the "before," a moment before the event, an instant before the apocalyptic explosion, a sense of the final illusionary suspension of time, in the West so distant the flow of air that hits the passenger in the tube tunnel before the train arrives. So it is for the opening, and the highlight of the entire album, the bleak and terrifying "Cupe Vampe" are the disturbing flashes in the night that cast on the barren land the flames engulfing the Library of Sarajevo. No drumming, only the acoustic and electric guitars of Zamboni and Canali, the syncopated or elastic and bewildered (like PIL) bass of Maroccolo, the "Magnellophoni" of Magnelli, and the liturgical and chanting singing (as it already was) of Lindo Ferretti in this absolute lyrical and musical masterpiece immediately placed at the beginning, portray a parallel world only in appearance, only apparently civilized, as only a slender veil separates contemporaneity from the depths of a current "middle age." The song is not, as one might think, centered only on the Balkan tragedy and the dissolution of man and civilization swallowed by the insane abyss of genocide, but it has a politicized undertone (ex Cccp): it is a song sarcastically against pacifisms, politically incorrect, but perhaps profoundly and terribly true in its denouncement of the failure of Civilization against the dark forces of the most beastly depths of Man and his impulses.

"Sogni e Sintomi" formalizes and makes the apparently just-concluded nightmare aseptic, both conceptually (clear is the psychoanalytic allusion and sociological reading) and musically: the piece is practically a continuous and monotonous pulsing of bass with hints of muted electric guitar that theatricalizes the lack of space and breath. After the horror, the beautiful cover of "E Ti Vengo a Cercare" by (and with) Franco Battiato (his voice in the last verse) seems a bit of a mirage, a bit of a found vital breath; Lindo Ferretti's singing is monotonous and perhaps deliberately contrasted to Battiato who appears almost iconizing the dream of salvation; the song, a hymn to the universality and divinity of love, is a clear counterpoint to the endless horror and abjection staged in "Cupe Vampe" a flight into the absolute and into the highest and most ennobling divine meanings for the human being. The lyrical and musical climax of the work closes with the opening triad: the "spatial" interweaving of electric guitars that in a long two-voice fugue follow one another in the instrumental outro is something that in the rest of this album (and others) will not be repeated. The past history of the title track is a clear juxtaposition to the desperate gaze on the present and the despairing vision of the future. "Linea Gotica" opens with a quote from a story contained in "I Ventitré Giorni della Città di Alba" by Beppe Fenoglio:

"Alba la presero in duemila
il dieci ottobre
e la persero in duecento
il due novembre
dell'anno 1944"

The tragedy of Alba is nothing but a rekindling of the thematic focus on the theme of war and wars (Alba as Sarajevo) through the highlighted indispensability of literary mediation as a possible reconstructive element, a vehicle of memory. "Linea Gotica" is the most open expression of the conceptual profile of the album, a memory of tragedy but precisely a memory preserved thanks to the written word printed on paper, escaped the holocaust of "Cupe Vampe" (certainly the most violent song ever written by C.S.I.). The recovery of the narrative dimension allows exiting the vortex of unmediated madness and the unbearable intensity of the initial triad, and yet at the same time to continue the story in a more subdued way; almost superfluous is reading the reference to the Italian-German Apennine defensive line aimed at slowing the Allied advance towards the Po Valley as another sarcastic ode to the uselessness and stupidity of the human being. The song that contains one of the twelve stories of the Resistance is then focused on the historical protagonists to whom the entire album is dedicated: the "Comandante Diavolo" Germano Nicolini and the "Obedient Monk" Giuseppe Dossetti. Subdued is the music as well, the guitar lines more sinuous and the bass seeming to chase them; "Millenni" represents another line of attack on the problem of human degradation, nothing anti-clerical (the reading would be superficial and quite foolish), percussive (despite the contrary indication in the booklet...) musically the most noise-core of the episodes, contains internal references to the uselessness of defensive bastions (religious, in this case) as well as to the layer of civilization making what we entrust our hope of salvation to appear as a presumptuous simulacrum; the importance of literature (the true undercurrent of the work and perhaps of the entire discography of C.S.I.) now reparative, now consolatory, now illusory simulation, is felt in the concluding "Irata": antinomic ("I could tell you what I can’t even write to you / I would hesitate to do it...") reconciling poetry and death ("today is Sunday, tomorrow we die, today I dress in silk and candor"), desiring an escape ("I will never return to where I was before"), but thematically expanded to embrace a broadened dimension of consciousness, along with the high citation of Pier Paolo Pasolini as "all those who denounce and highlight human degradation contribute, despite themselves, to increasing it, and this 'despite' is all that remains of our good conscience".

A necessarily and deliberately controversial, dark, violent album, at times labyrinthine and intensely poetic together, musically captivating, even if not without some excessive "effects" that partially undermine the "radical" choice expressed on a sound level. Not undeserving, for this reason, of the title of masterpiece.

"An irate sensation of deterioration"

By 'πνοςphere boy ©