Fabio Pianigiani
Legno

When you spend a fortune on a new age music album, it's a sign that you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Considering that the said album was listened to, with some concentration, about two and a half years after its purchase, makes it even more unsettling: you're still gnawing on the apple, and the waiter still hasn't come around to offer coffee and limoncello.

That unspecified evening there was hardly a soul around, also because it was the last night of a quaint and cheerful pseudo-medieval-themed little festival (in short, a tacky event), and the atmosphere was so bland that not even the half-drunk Coop mead brand buskers were seen around. But it was late summer, and the air wasn't too bad. Among a stand of bored people who didn't even try to sell you the usual incense and junk, you find yourself at the "Ravi Shankar Study Center" (due to the ominous privacy law, the Council of Scribblers chaired and patrolled by Myself as the only member has chosen not to name the real school, preferring to honor a dear departed. At least, dear so to speak, because I never really listened to a Ravi Shankar album) which among more or less interesting pamphlets you find a series of CDs titled Fire, Water, Wind, Wood. Come on, I don’t want to go home empty-handed, I'll take Wood. "15€, thank you!". Well. After all, you always have to bring something characteristic of the place back home, just as I felt obliged to bring home a (not-so-great) Golden Earring album from cheerful Amsterdam.

Two years later. Now there's all this hype for this damn The Hobbit, but I don't remember anything from the novel; I have to reread it since I will be one of those who will go see it on film, but I will have the dignity to go a few days after the premiere. I need background music while reading, otherwise in this particularly intense work period I would fall asleep after "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.". The time has come, Mr. Pianigiani will be pleased (if you are reading this, I assure you that I listened to it all, eh).

Yes, it's new age music, there's no escaping it. If my mind initially fancied with bold imagination ("what if it really was a collage of woody noises? Fascinating!"), the reality is that the three-quarters of an hour across three tracks drag on among (semi)acoustic guitars, oriental choirs, sounds of blowing wind, and perhaps sampled, perhaps not, percussion. But it's a new age album, the music doesn't matter, it's the concept that holds it all. Exactly, it's a new age album, the concept is always the same. I'm not going to explain it, also because I wouldn't be capable.

Absorb these liner notes:

WOOD. Represents the power of the wind that vibrates between SKY and EARTH exploring everything in its perennial journey in search of each hidden corner of the soul. Creates motion in all that surrounds it, causing empathetic chords to resonate, creating fluid forms and emotions in those whom, without barriers, yearn for that which is beyond. Wood's energy stimulates, harmonizes and dynamizes the liver which in our organism represents the fulcrum of all organic creation.

Now I have to continue reading The Hobbit, and the whole thing started on the wrong foot: every time I have to insert this spiritualcosmic journey into the CD player, otherwise, I can't handle the reading, always late at night and with a considerable workload on my shoulders (okay, I've cornered myself: anyone who complains about their job twice in the same conversation is the one doing nothing, in vino veritas), and every time it's a tough challenge to balance the volume high enough to envelop the reader Myself and not be annoying for those who aren't reading The Hobbit and couldn't care less about new age music.

Coming to the end of the review, or analysis, or better yet a mishmash of words, I realize that:

a) I am tired; b) it's too late to read The Hobbit; c) the CD ended ten minutes ago, I started it before hitting "Describe it - Your Review" so I've lost at least an hour of my life on all of this.