Fit & Limo
Internazionale

I received by mail a musical artifact from Germany, that is, new music in the kitchen.

The artifact is dated 1982 and is the work of Petra and Stefan, two who today create ultra-psychic stuff inspired by Incredible String Band, C.O.B, Pearls Before Swine.

I love them dearly and adore their cover of Barrett, but to be honest, I find them a tad monotonous. In ’82 they were, however, a bit more lively and whimsical.

It starts with: (A) low-fi sound effects (B) free clarinet (C) micro wave percussive clangs, then (D) arriving at track two, here's a beautiful metallic fluttering of thin silver threads. But that's not the point.

The point is that those threads lovingly support an uncertain little voice singing in Italian. And not just any nonsense, but a folk song about migratory sadness.

“The train coming from the south doesn’t bring only Maries (meaning the plural of the female name) with coral lips and eyes so big.”

Well, how can I say, it's one of those moments that make.

It might be the poverty of means, it might be the German accent, it might be the sun and the olive trees thrown into the modernist soup, it might be a Wyatt effect singing C.S.I, it might be all these things together but that singing, besides being disconcerting, really touches the heart.

And it does so despite that hint of incongruity and absurdity, indeed, who knows, maybe the quid is precisely this.

Then, since our friends at the time were real pranksters, they immediately change tune and go with the reading of an Italian restaurant menu:

“Fiorentina steak fruit, mixed fruit!!!! rosemary roasted potato!!!!! amaretto nougat!!!!”

All on a beautiful obsessive background.

Not only that, here you will also find: drills, harmonium, jewelry, sweetness... sharpness... free with added post-punk anguish, funny German tunes, magic folk moments...

And, the cherry on top, a tribute to Nico's “I’ll be your mirror” where the two slow down further and almost reach the skeleton.

Warm chill, minimal rhythm and just a few bursts here and there.

With the counterpoint of Nico’s voice that, stuck with tape, is a little piece of elsewhere.

The result, in the end, is that one loves these two even more.