Deca
Phantom

LA RECENSIONE

"Phantom" is a 1998 album by Deca, I've listened to it dozens of times and I would like to bring it to the attention of those who are familiar with the artist's recent work but not his earlier productions, and to those who already know it, because "Phantom" certainly holds an important and prominent place in the discography of this "sound alchemist", as the musician has often been described by the specialized press.

First of all, I would define it as a composition, a musical narrative that is not complete, does not end with this album. In fact, the extraterrestrial theme, the alien presence, is the leitmotif that runs through a bit of all of Deca's work, not only as a narrative or conceptual theme but also as a recurrence of sounds. For example, listening to the first track of the album "Aracnis Radiarum, Pandinus Imperator", you can notice the similarity of the chords with the track "Extraterrestrial (Part IV)" in "Phantom". This recurrence not just of themes but also of sounds could signify the fact that this music exists in the artist's mind, it is the expression in music, sound, of the narrative, the intuition of a presence in our reality or in our history of "forms" invisible to us because simply separated from our world in a different spatiotemporal dimension, but which someone is capable of "seeing" or perceiving, perhaps when immersed in the dream dimension.

The juxtaposition between the "Phantoms" and alien figures is not far off; both are intangible and distant presences from us, both live in other dimensions, other times, both seem to loom menacingly over us, and infest our thoughts, our dreams, or our memories. Indeed, listening to the track "Extraterrestrial (Part III)", the piano chords have a strong evocative power (as does all of Deca's music), indeed listening to the music with closed eyes, one can imagine being in a room with large windows, the curtains billowing from the wind, announcing the arrival of "someone", a ghost, coming from elsewhere, come to haunt us or because it wants to be remembered, because ghosts are not just the souls of dead creatures, but also the image of an absent person who lives in our memories and "haunts" our existence, a bit like the image of an extraterrestrial coming from space; what we observe is only the hologram, a reflection of its actual presence that perhaps happened light years ago, but that is no longer here among us.

These "presences" are unsettling, they make the blood run cold, but they are not necessarily evil or malevolent; they simply exist, and some ask to exist and to be represented. In this, Deca has succeeded in giving sound and "visibility" to beings from other worlds and dimensions, over time the narrative is enriched with details that are described gradually in the works that follow, like a narrative thread, each album is a chapter; better examples are works like Simbionte and Aracnis Radiarum. Of "Phantom" the whole album is recommended, but especially "Extraterrestrial" all, then "Vision of Faith", "Dreams and Tears", and "Phantoms" deserve particular attention because they distill in nuce the entire composition, a small masterpiece.