Ianva
Disobbedisco!

THE REVIEW

Anyone who has experienced, even once in their life, the exhilarating sensation of unexpectedly and providentially encountering a unique and immense work (and in this case, I hope, not unrepeatable), knows what a daunting task it is to try to recreate such a deep experience through words.

This album from the recent, heterogeneous musical project "Ianva" (for information on the ensemble's members, I refer you to the mentioned link, which will reveal pleasant surprises to some...), has struck the Italian musical horizon like lightning, collecting warm receptions from the most refined palates attentive to new proposals, yet perhaps not receiving the media recognition it truly deserved.

As can easily be deduced from the album title and the band's monicker, the significant content of the experiment unfolds in the vein of antimodernist and neocrepuscular countercultures (but especially "archeofuturistic", according to a famous definition by Faye, borrowed from early 20th-century Italian avant-garde movements) revisited in a historicist light, and emphasizing the most exquisitely "Italian" characteristics. The album's concept itself, exemplified by the vicissitudes of the two protagonists during the daring Fiume endeavor, is expressed through a D'Annunzian "sui generis" style: romantic, dark, and with a weary and disillusioned superhumanism.

Distorted, the canons of neofolk, of the French "accordionist" songwriting and Italian of Genoese origin (never has there been a more fruitful blend), are fused into a novel and surprising mixture, yet not fully complete: insights and citations range from local progressive, to dark rock, to Neapolitan song, to the dancing exoticisms of Latin music, forming a changing amalgam that exalts both the epic and melancholic tones of the various episodes. The tracks, in fact, often very different from each other and all, indiscriminately, more than valid, surprise not only for the originality of the arrangements (never banal, always unexpected) but also for the dramatic nature of the lyrics, the happy choices of effects and color, the memorable themes (always marked by the trumpet, both ethereal and apocalyptic).

The length of the tracks also varies, as does the voice, whether singing or in the recited or narrated parts: warm and sincere is that of "Maggiore Renzi", the male protagonist; passionate and venomous is that of the muse "Elettra", the female counterpart. It's impossible to recall specific episodes: the beauty here lies in the union of the parts that make up the whole. Equally impossible is listing the range of emotions that repeated, desperate listening to this album evokes: melancholy; ardor; irrepressible frenzy and abysmal despair; joy, and, sometimes, an unhealthy sense of impotent power.

Two notes before concluding. First, a warning: the album induces a sort of addiction that will prevent you from listening to anything else for at least two weeks. Also, a special mention for the artwork and the "booklet" contained in the CD, truly well made.

I hope my modest contribution has piqued your curiosity. If not, allow me a piece of advice: make this contemporary art gem your own, it's unacceptable that only a few enjoy it.