Diego Banchero Trio
Gathered Lectures from a Lifetime

With Gathered Lectures from a Lifetime, Diego Banchero performs an act of revelation. After decades spent weaving together esotericism and prog metal with Il Segno del Comando, the Genoese bassist steps out from the shadowy architectures that made him famous to reveal another side of his quest: one that does not deny ritual depth, but translates it into a free and visceral instrumental language. Recorded live at Nadir Studio, this first album by the Diego Banchero Trio is not a traditional solo record, but a kind of initiatory journey in the form of dark-hued jazz-rock, where the groove becomes enchantment and improvisation transforms into storytelling. The twelve tracks that make up the work feel like notes gathered over a lifetime, as the title suggests: “lectures” that are anything but academic, carrying instead the flavor of sonic confessions, of flashes of memory turned into music. Some tracks are reworkings of compositions already featured in Banchero’s previous projects, but here they take on new shapes, like ghosts returning to speak to us with a different face; others are born entirely anew, bringing with them the urgency to express what had not yet been said.
Banchero’s bass, the true protagonist, does not merely support: it leads, evokes, paints urban landscapes and nocturnal interiors. Around him, Roberto Lucanato’s guitar moves like a blade cutting through darkness, oscillating between lyricism and abrasiveness, while Fernando Cherchi’s drums drive with a precision that can be both tense and funky, as well as evocative and tribal. The ensemble calls to mind the soundtracks of ’70s Italian crime films, but filtered through a black, visionary, almost Lynchian lens: murky grooves, sudden bursts of tension, melodic fragments emerging like signals from a disturbed radio. There is no technical complacency, no sterile virtuosity: everything serves a flow that oscillates between the ritualistic and the cinematic, between smoky clubs and the theater of the occult. Gathered Lectures from a Lifetime is a sonic diary that defies classification: jazz, rock, funk, dark? All and none, because what matters here is the immersive experience, the alchemy that springs from the meeting of three musicians playing as if they were invoking spirits rather than performing sheet music.
Pressed in just 200 copies and destined to become a cult object, the album marks the beginning of a path that promises to reveal itself as parallel but complementary to that of Il Segno del Comando. If the parent band tells esoteric tales through lyrics and symphonic atmospheres, Banchero’s Trio does so with the universal language of instrumental music, entrusting to strings, skins, and the breath of the groove the same urgent need for transcendence. Available on Bandcamp: https://isdc.bandcamp.com/album/gathered-lectures-from-a-lifetime.