Indians
Sacred Spirit

"Hello everyone, before starting this review I would like to introduce myself. My name is Alessandro Martelli, I am 24 years old and I live in Trieste. I've been living here for quite some time, just enough to form a band where I act as the keyboardist and singer, which takes up much of my free time: traditional metal and a few pop-rock covers, nothing more. I live for music, as I believe you all do here on Debaser, and my interests range from the great black voices of gospel to nu-metal, and generally to all those modern musical trends that I am interested in more for culture than anything else. What I'm often criticized for, quite harshly, is the fact that among my interests are singers like Carboni or Masini, the green line of Italian melodic singers from the '80s-'90s, and alongside them some pop icons like Madonna and Sting, artists who may not be on par with the greats of the past, but whom I find possess a particular knack for producing "catchy" music. I want to quote Horace's Ars Poetica: Miscere utile dulci, or something like that; am I wrong to think that the pleasurable should be combined with the useful? Is it perhaps to be condemned the idea of feeling a bit of "sympathy" for pop music that you don't mind whistling blissfully in the car stereo on a trip? For some, 883, Jovanotti, Vasco are taboo, for me, they are catchiness.

Take for example this CD, "Sacred Spirit", already noted among new-age enthusiasts for at least a decade. Okay, I don't want to seem overly sentimental in my apology, but, damn, it's not new-age chintz as it is often portrayed. In fact, I don't even want to delve into the type of music and the inspirations behind it; I want to abstractly talk about the listening process that can accompany such a work, the concept of music through involvement. The listening experience is, throughout the album, decidedly comforting. It's just like that: if the approach towards the traditional songs of Native Americans seems admittedly challenging, through this earnest work one can marvelously penetrate a world that would otherwise seem hardly accessible to us, we can wonderfully immerse in the magnetic shamanic vocalizations and cling to a melody that only through keyboards and strings can appear happily pleasing and catchy. Thus, a rain-invoking chant can become the basis for a convincing sampling with piano and acoustic guitar in "Heya-Hee", the tenth track of the album, while ancestral spurs like "Ly-O-Lai-Ale Loya" and "Yeha Noha", hits of the collection, appear even more persuasive framed in a classic-ambient atmosphere; all this without taking anything away from appealing pieces like "Shamanic Chant n.5", where for the more fastidious of the genre, electronic simulations add nothing to a chant of sapid and evocative substance. In conclusion, in the Italian edition, two mixes that stand alone, yet incapable of tarnishing the good quality of a wonderfully homogeneous and evocative work.

Try listening to this album now: if you find it predictable and unbearable and you prefer something else, you are obviously free to do so, but afterward, it won't be easy not to whistle to the point of boredom pieces like "Yeha-Noha" or "Heya-Hee"."

Gathered by Eneathedevil, references to real events and people are purely coincidental