Diaframma
Volume 13

Twenty years have passed since "Siberia" (Volume 1), since that icy and claustrophobic 1984 when one of the masterpieces of Italian rock emerged in a Florence still shaken by the post-punk fury. Much has changed since then: fashions, customs, styles, and in the case of Diaframma, line-up changes and albums, some fantastic and others transitional, where the only unmovable element dictating their attitude of artistic independence from commercial logic (at their own expense) is Federico Fiumani.
Diaframma is him, there's no doubt. His extraordinary self-referential, ironic, realistic, and sometimes cynical lyrics have defined a career spanning more than twenty years where post-punk and Tom Verlaine-style guitars have gradually blended with a more mature singer-songwriter necessity.

The thirteenth chapter of this extraordinary story is "Volume 13", the latest album, which stands in their journey as one of the most successful and distinctive. The past is the absolute protagonist as it was in the previous "I giorni dell'ira", but in a more intimate way. There's little to say about the music: signature rock with a hidden but always present punk attitude. Sparse arrangements with the voice in the foreground. It's the lyrics that make these tracks unique and original, and the way they are sung. The tracks deliberately resemble each other. Worth mentioning is the collaboration on three tracks with the keyboards of Fabrizio Massara (Baustelle).

The '70s, the movement and the desire for change in relation to a woman in "Il sogno degli anni '70", the "emo" opening of the album "Ho venduto metà del patrimonio che ho per il fascino ambiguo di una semplice fotografia. Una foto mai vista che parlando mi disse E valeva la pena? e valeva la pena? e valeva la pena?" which, together with the subsequent "Elvis ed io", represent the most spirited moments of the album, opening to eight unforgettable singer-songwriter ballads. The third track brings the masterpiece of the album; "Fine di una relazione", an autobiographical narrative supported by an obsessive arpeggio and disrupted by the orderly rhythm of Daniele Trambusti (drummer, collaborator of Litfiba and company). A love story ended, surrounded by episodes, objects, meticulous descriptions of an unrepeatable historical-musical period in Florence with direct jabs at the punk movement of '77 against the nihilism and arrogance of some "...E quello che mi faceva più rabbia è che io gente così l'avevo anche sostenuta e ammirata, comprando un'infinità di dischi ed esaltandomi ai loro concerti". Another story is "Francesca, 1986", an ironic and violent account of a relationship, with two verses to cite and write in large letters on the walls "La sera la passiamo guardando un film, ma al mattino appena svegli io la sodomizzerò", and again "...Andiamo allo stadio, c'è Fiorentina-Juve e se ami tanto la violenza, vedrai quanta ce nè!". The melancholy of "Lode ai tuoi amici" echoes his neo-sensibilist manifesto "Noi malinconici abbiamo un ritmo più profondo di quello che ci pone il mondo" and the "pornographic" "Luisa dice" "Luisa è una ragazza un pò strana, che ama farsi penetrare, ed altrettanto ama penetrare selvaggiamente. Bocca sulla bocca, seno contro seno, lama sulle labbra...", conclude the first part of the album to reopen with the rare instrumental episode "Music n°1".

"Questo tempo con me" talks again about his Florence, an obsession not only of Fiumana "Questo tempo con me, e chi se lo aspettava poi, perchè?...questa sera dove andiamo?...al Tenax per il suo nuovo anno, ma c'è la selezione e non ci fanno più entrare". The third woman mentioned in the album after Francesca and Luisa is Silvia in "Ai piedi di Silvia", boldly quoting a slightly more well-known singer-songwriter than him "Ha ragione Vasco quando dice che una donna non perdona, se la fai più importante di te". The Tuscan province and the escape from the city of "Vaiano" "Voglio andare a Vaiano per trovare un disperato ma reale aggancio con la realtà" and "Day off" another descriptive and cinematic masterpiece, conclude an album with emotions running high.

Anger, irony, frustration, awareness, melancholy, and then Florence, the Tenax, punk, '77, Francesca, Luisa, Silvia, sex, music, concerts, all in this "Volume 13", the work of a singer-songwriter who will be remembered, surely after many years, for the indispensable contribution he made to Italian music.