Ivano Fossati
Macramè

In 1995, Ivano Fossati, after several periods of compositional "hermitage," finished writing "Anime salve" with Fabrizio De André, one of the absolute masterpieces of Italian songwriting.

While the compositional period of the two authors had been extremely fruitful, the collaboration between the two ended due to divergences on the production and arrangement of the album. "We were like two big donkeys pulling in opposite directions," Fossati would later declare. In the end, it was Fossati who relinquished the album's rights to De André, who entrusted the production to Piero Milesi.

Frustrated by that renunciation, Fossati immediately went back to work composing "Macramé." Despite the profusion of energy for the composition of "Anime salve," in this album, there is no trace of tiredness, and the author presents songs of great sophistication and taste, managing also to renew the sounds of previous albums.

The listening begins with the restless percussion of "La vita segreta," a severe and direct song that manifests (as does the entire album, after all) a desire for renewal and a very strong intellectual and emotional tension. The tension eases a bit with "Il canto dei mestieri," a minimalist song in which Fossati, stripping himself of any role, declares himself to his beloved. "L’amante," "L’angelo e la pazienza," and "L’orologio americano" instead show all the thirst for sensual love that can assault a man, presenting sketches of life made vivid by sparse yet evocative sounds, with very elaborate rhythmic sequences (in some cases, we are in the presence of a refined rhythmic session formed by Walter Kaiser, Trilok Gurtu, Naco, Claudio Fossati, and Beppe Quirici, who, combining their rhythmic instinct, achieve sometimes surprising results).

The album also features the participation of the great bassist Tony Levin (do names like "King Crimson" or "Liquid tension" ring a bell for you?) who here tempers his "progressive vein" showing great musical versatility and composing, along with Fossati, "Stella benigna" and "L’abito della sposa." The former is a pressing and raw song with a highly evocative "chorus." The latter is a song with a strong dramatic pathos, where the presence of a narrator and the two protagonists of the piece seems to push us into a theatrical dimension reflecting one of the many dramas offered by war. We find similar emotional tension in "Bella speranza (ti scrivo da una guerra)," where once again, the horror of war is palpable, perhaps made more acute by the fact that at that time, a terrible conflict was occurring alongside our country in the former Yugoslavia. The album concludes with "La scala dei santi" and "Speakering." The former is a sweet and intimate love song in which it is impossible to find a grain of banality. "Speakering" instead is a melancholic piano instrumental intersected by sound inserts collected from radios and televisions from around the world.

The album fades on these notes and draws you towards sweet desires and melancholies…