Eugenio Finardi
Dal blu

"Quarters of distant music tones/echoes of baroque in the canal water/vocoder impulses in a digital sequence/Drum signals like a tropical jungle/but there always comes a moment when you have to play/The Blue/and slide down/to the bottom of the/Blue"

"From the Blue"

Year 1983; after spending half of the previous decade writing challenging and decidedly politically direct songs, Eugenio Finardi creates an album with completely different tones but no less successful for it. "From the Blue" is a work that leaves the listener breathless; a collection of songs that all stand out for their stylistic perfection and a clean, flawless sound that makes the compositions small islands in a sea of crystalline purity.

It begins with "From the Blue," a guitar-less blues where the keyboards dominate without disturbing, their arrangement is perfect, outlining an excellent melodic line complemented by very effective singing. The important element of the work is indeed the electronic component, which, managed in the best possible way thanks to a sophisticated production program (the Fairlight), makes the album a precious example of technology applied to music without this denaturing the essence of the art itself. There are two tracks that are the manifesto of this new way of making music, the most famous songs from "From the Blue": "Amore Diverso" and "Le Ragazze Di Osaka". These tracks are two splendid examples of refinement and delicacy, two clear and clean ballads with ethereal and elusive lyrics. Indeed, Finardi has the characteristic of writing very personal songs, and in "Le Ragazze Di Osaka" the lyrics immediately surprise, "I feel alone in the crowd/I observe everything and touch nothing/I feel strange and unimportant/almost as if I were transparent/And then/I stay still, and move nothing/the sand falls slowly/the water is clear and you can see the bottom/finally clear../". A song well known to the general public, featuring only bass, drums, and keyboards, a splendid musical texture, it was later covered by Alice in 1989 for "Il Sole Nella Pioggia", and with a different arrangement and slowed down a bit, it became even more beautiful. A similar discussion for "Amore Diverso", another very well-known song, slightly more airy than the previous one, it starts similarly to "Straniero" by Lucio Battisti on "E Già", but Finardi's electronics are not as cold as Battisti's, and the harmonic openings are splendid, "It will be a different love/as big as the universe/that time cannot touch/small things to warm up/large kites to fly/And it will always be a new game/to keep the fire burning/in the long time to come/small stones to carry/and to follow to return/".

The rest of the album features more typical tracks of the early Finardi style, "Dolci Promesse", "Fino In Fondo", and "Infinita Autostrada", the latter being a typical power track of the musician. It closes with "Laura Degli Specchi", written for the closing of "Azimut" by Alice, Finardi’s version is less showy and simpler, while Alice's version exploits the remarkable interpretative skills of the Forlì singer with a finale dominated by Giusto Pio's violin.

A highly recommended album.