bogusman

I'm listening to "On the Sunday of Life" right now, their first album, I believe, and I feel that it will be one of my go-to listens for the upcoming gray months... I've come a bit late to discovering a great band...

Hehehe! Click click! Did you see how little it takes to capture the attention of certain youngsters? Learn, Odra! The Sycophant Buddy

"Let's stop here, or shall we go beyond the limits?" And when do we ever not cross the line? Alright, I’ll leave you to your questionable pursuits... I’m going out to buy myself a new cilicio, there was one that was so cute at a liquidation!!!!

Yeah, right? Without that "little steaming electro-new age soup" there wouldn’t have been any of the later albums. Then it’s strange that EG talks it down so much, considering that "La sposa occidentale" was the most resolutely electronic album up to that point, and it exactly connects to the sounds of E, after the electro-sonphonic fusions of DG and L'app. No???

Yes, it's true, a bit of Village People is just fine (fantastic! they've returned to perform, at least those who are left...) regarding UGU... too many keyboards, too many layers! You can feel that there was a need for a healthy palingenesis, a cleansing of all the high-chart dance frills... and indeed!

"Nessun Dolore is compelling, nothing but fake rock, it has many disco music bends in the style of Blondie and New Order" mmmmmmmh confusion confusion: aside from the fact that you can also hear Sonic Youth if you want... I'll give you the Blondie style bends, but not those of New Order, really! Just for the fact that the NO will form after 1980... I hear a second-hand disco, the only misstep of Lucio's entire career. In his pursuit of the perfect international sound, he had rested a bit too much on this late "bee-gees" style, and it's a bit the same problem that UGU suffers from... Come on, Enea! at least admit that these are over-arranged pieces!!!

Yes, I think that in ITNT, besides having better musicians (or perhaps just more professional at translating Lucio's ideas), there was undoubtedly a higher quality level of the songs. Even Lucio himself doesn't seem quite the same... in La Compagnia, there's little to do; he simply doesn't fit. In the chorus of Ami Ancora Elisa, there's a "delightful" out-of-tune note that fits perfectly into the harmonic structure of the song.

From UDPA, I would take to the desert island that masterpiece of cinematic writing that is "Prendila così" (both for the lyrics, and for the music, and for the arrangement). The rest of the album fails to seduce me. I get really annoyed when I hear those pseudo-Beach Boys choruses in "aver paura etc"; the title track has always left me with a false taste (the "fake rock music" that Battiato will talk about later?) just like "nessun dolore"... "Maledetto Gatto" and "Al Cinema" have always seemed too lightweight to me. I don’t know, but I’ve always preferred the homogeneity of bass, guitars, drums, keyboards - that's it - in ITNT to all these diverse arrangements (which I find a bit contrived, to be honest).

In DG, the deviation is functional to the "poetic" nature (indeed) of the project: DG is a work with a decidedly postmodern color, where, if one seeks balance, it is precisely found in the daring juxtapositions of very heterogeneous pieces, which are also diversified within themselves. From a sonic perspective, DG is a masterpiece of timbral clarity and instrumental cleanliness (comparable, in my opinion, to Fagen's Nightfly, but that's another matter). Regarding this shift of the mid-70s towards funk-disco music, in LBLBICE, the partial incompleteness somewhat detracts from the work because it doesn't concern so much the instrumental cleanliness (which isn't a major flaw) as the writing of the songs. In ITNT, there is an instrumental fluidity that is required by the genre in question, with the right fractures at the right time, accelerations, and delightful transitions that you could listen to forever, along with a Mogol in splendid form: to me, there is more "poèsia" (it makes me a bit uncomfortable to talk about "poetry") in the anxiety of "not even a minute" or in the childhood fantasies of "the interpreter..." than in other much-praised songs of the Duo. The famous debate "Perfection VS experimentalism" is not a cause I've embraced by signing a blood contract; if I were perfectly linear and true to myself, I would prefer LBLBICE, but in this case, I vote for ITNT.

the clash, open an interesting debate: first of all, we should define what is poetic versus what is not. poetry (or at least an interesting text) is not just made of images detached from everyday life, and the words everyone uses (in the end, they are always the same, right?) can awaken new meanings if used in the right way... And for my part, Fantozzi contains moments of authentic poetry.