Gino D'Eliso
Ridatemi i congiuntivi

Following the return to albums after 18 years, another ten will pass before Gino D'Eliso releases a new work.

This time, everything is done in-house, with his label Mitteleurock Production.

Ridatemi i congiuntivi is born not only from the need/request to reclaim one's linguistic identity, but with it, also one's culture and thought.

In this regard, the cover is explicit: a class of students from the past that seems to be projecting into the future, in a present of dormant consciences. Gino explains the origins of the album, released this time on CD, just like in 2001: to bring young people closer to knowledge through the popularity of music, especially traditional and analog knowledge, made of books to leaf through and smell, of tangible objects.

Gino D'Eliso graduated in Philosophy from the University of Trieste, and was a Doctor of Research in Urbino. A man with a solid humanistic culture, as well as musical.

The songs of this Ridatemi i congiuntivi are mostly inspired by the novels that have most fascinated the singer-songwriter.

"Anni sull'altipiano", for example, is clearly inspired by Un anno sull'altipiano by Emilio Lussu, published in 1938 and one of the most important works on World War I. Musically, it features Joe Niemela's sax.

"Vita in stato di ebbrezza" is an autobiographical folk-rock written three years earlier, a beautiful track.

Then comes the title track, with its iconic chorus: "Ridatemi i congiuntivi/Le doppie, l’educazione/Ridatemi a viva forza/La pulizia, la pulizia dal cerone". The "cerone" as a symbol of the actor's mask and hence of falsehood compared to real life.

L'ora di tutti by Maria Corti, on the other hand, is the inspiration for "Siamo arrivati a Sud", a track permeated with Middle Eastern arrangements. The book and the song refer to the Turkish siege of Otranto in 1480. The survivors of the attack preferred death rather than renouncing their ideals.

Works of the past and on the past taken as a cue for reflection on the present.

"Le notti bianche" are instead the ones the singer-songwriter spends in his Trieste, among long discussions in bars and people who recognize and admire him.

At this point, Gino D'Eliso revisits two tracks from the '80s, namely "Canzone d'amore", already recorded in 1983 on Cattivi pensieri, here in a more melancholic tone; and "Chelsea Hotel", the B-side of the 45 rpm "Oktoberfest" by Patrizia' Zzani, written by him but never recorded.

"Le grandi pietre bianche" is a tribute to the stony grounds of the Karst, that Karst to which a splendid track in his first LP is dedicated and which here highlights the cultural division of the area.

Just like Europa Hotel concluded with a surprising diptych, so does Ridatemi i congiuntivi. Two songs from 1979 are revisited. The first is "Signore degli imbecilli", a protest rock rejected by D'Eliso's record label and sung by the Revolver in their eponymous and only album of the Trieste band, produced by Gino; and "Pino Delirio & His Fabulous Rocker Boys", clearly autobiographical (Pino Delirio is a clear assonance of the author’s first and last name) singing about a musician pressured by the harsh laws of the music market.

The author has also revealed other details about this album, such as the slowness and relaxation with which it was conceived. And with as much, seven years later, Valvole e vinile will see the light.

Finally, but this is my impression, I see this work and its predecessor in some ways akin to Gianmaria Testa's Altre latitudini and Da questa parte del mare, certainly for their glancing beyond the Adriatic.