Ginevra
DIAMANTI

Already active for a few years and in 2022 making her debut with this "DIAMANTI", the Turin native Ginevra Lubrano, simply known as GINEVRA, is an artist whose music did not initially make a particularly thrilling impression on me, partly because she performed on a stage, that of the Milan Pride, which did not enhance her at all and did very little to highlight her qualities as an author and composer. Moreover, in such a context, she herself seemed a bit like a fish out of water, overshadowed as she was by a lineup that positioned her as an opening act for more or less famous and more or less talented artists.

Luckily, by sheer chance, in the midst of searching for something new to listen to, I stumbled upon her debut album, which, away from the crowd and free to resonate in the silence of a solitary headphone session, casts its author in a whole new light. It is, in fact, an intimate and ethereal electro-pop gem, filled with a nocturnal atmosphere that at times recalls the icy soundscapes offered by Royksöpp and Portishead. Exemplary in this regard are "OCEANO" and "CIGNO", respectively the opening and closing of the record: the former is a sweet ballad featuring a chilly synthetic backdrop (complete with a luxury sampling from the British duo Autechre), the latter is a life retrospective marked by a refined electronic beat, itself drowned in a haze of keyboards and sampled voices. What lies in the middle of the lineup is no less interesting, with delicate dance-house pulses ("ANARCHICI"), smoky hints of trip-hop ("CLUB"), sudden drum'n'bass bursts ("CALAMITE", "RAGNATELE"), and some pleasant diversions into more purely pop territories (the title track and "ASTEROIDI"). In all of this, she is not just a good performer, but as a good hostess, she also chooses skilled collaborators to give everything the right sound: forged together with Marco and Francesco Fugazza, with whom Lubrano had already collaborated for the EP "METROPOLI", the sound of "DIAMANTI" possesses an elegance that is almost miraculous for the way it manages to hold together interesting ideas and suggestions and gives each piece a distinct personality while making the whole sound perfectly cohesive, both in the more delicate and intimate passages and when there's a need to push with bass and drums.

Not bad at all for a debut, considering also that even the less convincing tracks still contribute to further strengthening its sonic and aesthetic identity, with the result that with the first record GINEVRA demonstrates an already very refined and recognizable artistic personality, one to keep an eye on in anticipation of future developments.