Juri Camisasca
Arcano Enigma

There are times when in the whirlwind cauldron of music reviews, some emerge destined to remain alone, without a glance, without a comment, without a voice of comfort. These reviews, rare and powerless, speak of something only they know, of distant artists and worlds unknown to most, memories and legacies from other regions of creation, from clods devoid of thought.
This review is one of them: destined to remain alone without comments or appreciations, it is about an elusive artist who loves meditation, a "lonely" and profound author whom supernal forces uprooted from the icy ground of an ancient land, a restless spirit whose faith in the Divine managed to inspire a vital breath that transcends the immanent and its contingencies, the religious spirit of Roberto "Juri" Camisasca.

It is unknown who Juri is, and perhaps one should think that he himself is not deeply known if one considers an individual so restless that he withdrew into monastic life for eleven years, a character so focused on the search for the Thèion that he has isolated himself for more than ten years near the sanguine and clay slopes of Etna, brought back to the unstable foundation of the Sicilian island by the same transcendent forces that birthed him in Melegnano, in the Milan area, in 1951. A product of the final, hermitic period, and counted among his greatest musical works, is the deep and eclectic "Arcano Enigma", produced in 1999 and performed in collaboration with Bluvertigo, a precious and unique album steeped in electronic sensations, Latin quotations, musical classicism, and above all the constant spiritual quest of an author who has chosen to put to music the peculiarities of his religious reflection: asceticism and thirst for the divine in a dense cauldron of musical impressions. The search for the Other, the Supernatural, is realized in Camisasca in a religious journey that transcends the contingency of the faith profession he has elected: undoubtedly Christian as the most exploited model of his work, Saint Augustine, but at the same time, a free spirit who recognizes in the animal world "instinct and soul" despite the contrasting Christian ideas about it, provides an effigy of modern man representing the latter as a wandering individual torn between superstition ("Zodiaco", "Non Cercarti Fuori", "Polvere e Diamanti") and the ambition toward the divine ("Tocchi Terra Tocchi Dio", "Erranti Stelle"), the human instinct caught between the earthly and the celestial. Through the gaze on man, the reflection on one's intimacy, on one's inner journey, on the teachings of Augustine's "Confessions": from his supreme mentor the most significant verses of the album, the divine and unintelligible "Arcano Enigma" which gives name to both track and work, together with the Anhelo Tibi" of "Saint Augustine" through which Juri masterfully condenses his desire to ascend to the Divine. To leave nothing lacking in this splendid work, in the full container of religious sensations, stand out the musical faculties of a Camisasca, masterfully assisted by Bluvertigo, highlighting happy inclinations to electronics in tracks like "Ecce Panis" and the already mentioned "Zodiaco", a true and proper delirious masterpiece, as well as the inclination to meditative music of the title track and "Tocchi Terra Tocchi Dio", finally not neglecting the more contaminated rock-pop temptations of pieces like "Erranti Stelle" and the same "Saint Augustine", true examples of varied musical eclecticism.

All of this is Juri Camisasca, a rare and unique artist that only a solitary and forgotten review like this can remember, with the hope that someone, perhaps out of curiosity, may give it a distracted read, and that especially someone, by inertia, by induction, by participation, may for a moment let themselves be enchanted by the spell of a man who Believes.