Kirlian Camera
Invisible Front. 2005

LA RECENSIONE

"Invisible Front. 2005" from 2004 (!!!) consolidates what can be defined as the third reincarnation of the Kirlian Camera entity (an incarnation that will find its definitive consecration in the subsequent, beautiful "Coroner's Sun" from 2006).

If KC were born and developed in the eighties around the charismatic figure of Angelo Bergamini, and in the nineties, also and above all thanks to the addition of Emilia Lo Iacono, the project would take on broader stylistic connotations. The third phase of KC's career becomes characterized by the artistic collaboration with singer/composer Elena Alice Fossi, who starting from "Unidentified Light" in 1999, will play an increasingly significant role within the Parma-based formation.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Bergamini and Fossi are now a perfectly tuned engine. The electronic weavings of the former blend seamlessly with the sublime vocal evolutions of the latter, comfortable both as a lyrical singer and in the guise of a transgressive dark-lady.

"Invisible Front. 2005" is a product with harmonious contours and impeccable in form. Much merit goes to Bergamini, an astute and savvy musician, even though it's always worth noting that the dedication and passion he's always infused into his work ensure that the music of the Emilian artist never sounds like a sterile recycling of past ideas and solutions: the KCs miraculously retain their brilliance and sparkle, and this is because Angelo Bergamini composes for himself, thinking of himself, chasing his inspirations and visions. And the KCs are simply the expression of his pure and uncontaminated talent.

If we really have to find a flaw in the work, it might be that it lingers excessively on certain more easy-listening sounds that steer the KC sound towards the shores of a sophisticated authorial synth-pop.

An example of this is the phantasmagorical "K-Pax", a manifesto of this new course for the KCs: a pounding base and pompous arrangements serve the divine Fossi, a sort of Patti Pravo of hyperspace, who effortlessly alternates between spiraling like a space siren and more markedly dark descents (let's remember the singer's punk past). What emerges is a track that literally outshines 90% of the EBM, electro-goth, disco, and pop tracks currently circulating. A start with a bang, we could say, even if in the first part of the work, it will be easy to come across tracks perhaps a bit too sugary for our tastes, such as the crafty "Dead Zone in the Sky" or the classic "The Path of Flowers", a melancholy cosmic ballad where a suffering Bergamini, affected as always, offers us one of his best vocal performances ever. And if many will turn up their noses, it's worth remembering that even in the most shamelessly crowd-pleasing moments, the KCs do not disappoint in terms of professionalism and ability to convey emotions.

The fascinating space settings, moreover, are not abandoned: the tracks retain a sideral inspiration that over the years has constituted the real trademark of the band, even though in "K -Space- Y 1", they opt for acoustic guitar to bring out an ethereal folk with vague references to late sixties prog (but even this is not a novelty in the KC household, even if the tracks performed in the past by Lo Iacono seemed to draw more inspiration from an apocalyptic dark/folk matrix).

However, to prevail are the airy keyboard scores, with a clear landscape taste, and the noises, voices, disturbed frequencies coming from the dark recesses of an unknown and enigmatic space. The same "Nefertiti One", the ideological manifesto of the work, talks about a shuttle launched into space in the year 2005, containing the reproduction of the body of a beautiful thirty-three-year-old woman, as a testimony of human beauty, for the use and consumption of other possible life forms: an ideal of beauty and purity to be safeguarded that represents Bergamini's elitist and inevitably pessimistic vision, strongly critical of the current society, dumbed down by the media, shamefully bogged down in an inexorable cultural and spiritual decline.

An enveloping, bewitching album, this "Invisible Front. 2005", which renounces the hermeticism that prevailed in past productions, but at the same time avoids descending into mere banality. In the final stretch, for instance, the path of the duo takes a more experimental turn, recovering the cosmic-industrial suggestions of the nineties, where rarefied atmospheres, Bergamini’s electronic beats, and Fossi's choruses, the sensual angel of the Apocalypse, prevail.

In this last handful of tracks, the astounding "A Woman's Dreams" stands out, hosting none other than the morbid vocals of the great Jarboe, renowned muse of the Swans. Bergamini and Fossi (also skilled behind keyboards and samplers) set up a hallucinatory journey where it's easy to get lost and disappear among the spirals of a boiling, impetuous electronic that can grow and submerge (but not drown!) a Jarboe in a state of grace, dispensing essays of authentic, liquid existential discomfort between sacred and profane.

An illustrious guest (and she’s not the only one, nor the first!) that underscores, if needed, the high intrinsic value and respectability that the project enjoys even at an international level.

Bergamini pleases the people who please! And do you please?