Franti/Contrazione
Split

"In a world organized and crushed by the logic of profit and power, fundamental points to break the rules are self-management and self-production. Creating and collectively self-managing rehearsal rooms, recording studios, instruments, the reproduction and distribution of sound material, print, etc., means cutting off the hands of speculators and businessmen".

With these words (written on the cover), this work from 84 is introduced, divided in half between two Turin groups: Contrazione and Franti.

This album, then, is a common initiative of struggle for self-management, freedom, and artistic purity, expressed and communicated through angry and desperate pieces, attentive to contemporary content and reality. Franti and Contrazione are two cult-underground groups that are very different: hardcore-folk, the former, hardcore-punk, the latter, but both united in intentions and spirit.

The Contrazione use the sounds, colors, and life of their city for their struggle. A struggle for freedom of expression and for political prisoners, for the rebels of society, dealing with themes like heroin, nuclear power, and with particular attention to Turin and its progressive environmental decay. All this through angry, shouted music (sung in Italian), played at high speed, with sudden accelerations and slowdowns.

"I will not scream, I will not give them a way to make sense of their actions, I will not speak, I will not beg them to give me hope again; a dark room with a chair, a light searching in my brain, answers I do not want to give, the head explodes but not the heart, dark days spent inside, without knowing what time is, dull sounds of oppression, bars tied around the heart". ("Sbarre")

The Franti instead are very eclectic, between Area and Bob Dylan, but also very original. In their pieces, anger is accompanied by despair: they talk about prison and death penalty. It starts with "1984/Gates Of Eden" a very experimental piece that then fades into the very fast Dylan cover; moves through the pulsating "Questa è l'ora", the heart-wrenching "Quesiti da sciogliere", then "Voghera", where Lalli sings with only the bare drum, with sax inserts, and finally arrives at the urgent "Prete, croce, sedia, morte".

"This is the hour that I hate my day, this is the hour, this is the hour that I hate my day, this is the hour, this is the hour of darkness on faces, this is the hour, this is the hour of darkness on faces, this is the hour, this is the hour of night and rest, this is the hour tired of everything, this is the hour that I don't want anything anymore, massacre, work, money, defeat, this is the hour to light a fire, a fire that burns every boundary, a fire that burns every wait, a fire that burns every denied hour, now is the hour, now is the hour, now is the hour". ("Questa è l'ora")